5 'FRANCE  AND 
WfSk  AT  WARO 

>H-G- WELLS  •>■ 


I 


7 


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ITALY,  FRANCE 
AND  BRITAIN  AT  WAR 


MR.  WELLS  HAS  ALSO  WRITTEN 

The  Following  Novels: 

Love  akd  ]VIk.  Lewisham 

Kipps 

Mb.  Polly 

The  Wheels  of  Chance 

The  New  Machiavelli 

Ann  Veronica 

Marriage 

ToNo  Bungay 

Bealby 

The  Passionate  Friends 

The  Wife  of  Sib  Isaac  Habman 

The  Research  Magnificent 

Me.  Bbitling  Sees  It  Theough 

Short  Stories  Collected  Under  the  Titles 

Thibty  Strange  Stobies 
Twelve  Stories  and  a  Dream 
Tales  of  Space  and  Time 

The  Folloiving  Fantastic  and  Imaginative  Romances 

The  Time  Machine 

The  War  of  the  Woelds 

The  Sea  Lady 

The  Wonderful  Visit 

In  the  Days  of  the  Comet 

The  Sleepeb  Awakes 

The  Food  of  the  Gods 

The  Wab  in  the  Aie 

The  First  Men  in  the  Moon 

The  World  Set  Free 

The  Island  of  Dr.  Mobeau 

A  Series  of  Books  upon  Social  and  Political  Questions: 

Anticipations   (1900) 

Mankind  in  the  Making 

A  Modebn  Utopia 

First  and  Last  Things   (Religion  and  Philosophy) 

The  Future  in  America 

New  Worlds  fob  Old 

Social  Forces  in  England  and  Amebica 

What  Is  Coming? 

Italy,  France  and  Britain  at  Wab 

And  Tico  Little  Bools  About  CViildren's  Play  Called 

Floob  Games 
Little  Wabs 


L ITALY,  FRANCE 
AND  BRITAIN  AT  WAR 


BY 
H.  G.  WELLS 


^m  fork 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1917 


COPTEIGHT,    1917, 

By  H.  G.  wells 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published,  February,  1917. 
Reprinted  February,  March,  three  times,  April,  1917. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The  Passing  of  the  Effigy 1 

The  War  in  Italy  (August,  1916) 

I.    The  Isonzo  Front 35 

II.    The  Mountain  War 45 

III.    Behind  the  Front 58 

The  Western  War  (September,  1916) 

I.    EuiNS        75 

II.    The  Grades  of  War 88 

III.  The  War  Landscape 107 

IV,  New  Arms  for  Old  Ones 127 

V.    Tanks 153 

How  People  Think  About  the  War 

I.    Do  They  Really  Think  at  All?      .     .  172 

11.    The  Yielding  Pacifist  and  the  Con- 
scientious Objector 184 

III.  The  Religious  Revival 200 

IV.  The  Riddle  of  the  British     .     .     .     .216 
V.    The  Social  Changes  in  Progress     .     .  231 

VI.    The  Ending  of  the  War 255 


ITALY,  FRANCE  AND 
BRITAIN  AT  WAR 

THE  PASSING  OF  THE  EFFIGY 


One  of  the  minor  peculiarities  of  this  unprece- 
dented war  is  the  Tour  of  the  Front.  After  some 
months  of  suppressed  information  —  in  which  even 
the  war  correspondent  was  discouraged  to  the 
point  of  elimination  —  it  was  discovered  on  both 
sides  that  this  was  a  struggle  in  which  Opinion  was 
playing  a  larger  and  more  important  part  than  it 
had  ever  done  before.  This  wild  spreading  weed 
was  perhaps  of  decisive  importance;  the  Germans 
at  any  rate  were  attempting  to  make  it  a  cultivated 
flower.  There  was  Opinion  flowering  away  at 
home,  feeding  rankly  on  rumour;  Opinion  in  neu- 
tral countries;  Opinion  in  the  enemy  country; 
Opinion  getting  into  great  tangles  of  misunder- 
standing and  incorrect  valuation  between  the  Allies. 
The  confidence  and  courage  of  the  enemy,  the  amia- 
bility and  assistance  of  the  neutral ;  the  zeal,  sacri- 


2  ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

fice,  and  serenity  of  the  home  population ;  all  were 
affected.  The  German  cultivation  of  opinion  be- 
gan long  before  the  war;  it  is  still  the  most  syste- 
matic and,  because  of  the  psychological  ineptitude 
of  Germans,  it  is  probably  the  clumsiest.  The 
French  Maison  de  la  Presse  is  certainly  the  best  or- 
ganisation for  making  things  clear,  counteracting 
hostile  suggestion,  and  propagating  good  under- 
standing in  existence.  The  British  official  organ- 
isations are  comparatively  ineffective;  but  what  is 
lacking  officially  is  very  largely  made  up  for  by 
the  good  will  and  generous  efforts  of  the  English 
and  American  press.  An  interesting  monograph 
might  be  written  upon  these  various  attempts  of 
the  belligerents  to  get  themselves  and  their  pro- 
ceedings explained. 

Because  there  is  perceptible  in  these  develop- 
ments, quite  over  and  above  the  desire  to  influence 
opinion,  a  very  real  effort  to  get  things  explained. 
It  is  the  most  interesting  and  curious  —  one  might 
almost  write  touching  —  feature  of  these  organisa- 
tions that  they  do  not  constitute  a  positive  and  de- 
fined propaganda  such  as  the  Germans  maintain. 
The  German  propaganda  is  simple,  because  its  ends 
are  simple;  assertions  of  the  moral  elevation  and 
loveliness  of  Germany,  of  the  insuperable  excellen- 
cies of  German  Kultur,  the  Kaiser,  the  Crown 
Prince,  and  so  forth,  abuse  of  the  "  treacherous  " 


THE  PASSING  OF  THE  EFFIGY  3 

English  who  allied  themselves  to  the  "  degenerate  " 
French  and  the  "barbaric"  Eussians,  nonsense 
about  "  the  freedom  of  the  seas  " —  the  emptiest 
phrase  in  history  —  childish  attempts  to  sow  sus- 
picion between  the  Allies,  and  still  more  childish 
attempts  to  induce  neutrals  and  simple-minded  paci- 
fists of  allied  nationality  to  save  the  face  of  Ger- 
many by  initiating  peace  negotiations.  But  apart 
from  their  steady  record  and  reminder  of  German 
brutalities  and  German  aggression,  the  press  or- 
ganisations of  the  Allies  have  none  of  this  deflnite- 
ness  in  their  task.  The  aim  of  the  national  intelli- 
gence in  each  of  the  allied  countries  is  not  to  exalt 
one's  own  nation  and  confuse  and  divide  the  enemy, 
but  to  get  to  a  real  understanding  with  the  peoples 
and  spirits  of  a  number  of  different  nations,  an  un- 
derstanding that  will  increase  and  become  a  fruitful 
and  permanent  understanding  between  the  allied 
peoples.  Neither  the  English,  the  Russians,  the 
Italians  nor  the  French,  to  name  only  the  bigger 
European  allies,  are  concerned  in  setting  up  a 
legend,  as  the  Germans  are  concerned  in  setting  up 
a  legend  of  themselves  to  impose  upon  mankind. 
They  are  reality  dealers  in  this  war,  and  the  Ger- 
mans are  effigy  mongers.  Practically  the  Allies  are 
saying  each  to  one  another,  "  Pray  come  to  me  and 
see  for  yourself  that  I  am  very  much  the  human 
stuff  that  you  are.     Come  and  see  that  I  am  doing 


4  ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

my  best  —  and  I  think  it  is  not  so  very  bad  a 
best.  .  .  ."  And  with  that  is  something  else  still 
more  subtle,  something  rather  in  the  form  of, 
"  And  please  tell  me  what  you  think  of  me  —  and 
all  this." 

So  we  have  this  curious  byplay  of  the  war,  and 
one  day  I  find  Mr.  Nabokoff,  the  editor  of  the 
Retch,  and  Count  Alexy  Tolstoy,  that  writer  of  deli- 
cate short  stories,  and  Mr.  Chukovsky,  the  subtle 
critic,  calling  in  upon  me  after  braving  the  wintry 
seas  to  see  the  British  fleet;  Mr.  Joseph  Reinach 
follows  them  presently  upon  the  same  errand,  and 
then  appear  photographs  of  Mr.  Arnold  Bennett 
wading  in  the  trenches  of  Flanders,  Mr.  Noyes  be- 
comes discreetly  indiscreet  about  what  he  has  seen 
among  the  submarines,  and  Mr.  Hugh  Walpole 
catches  things  from  Mr.  Stephen  Graham  in  the 
Dark  Forest  of  Russia.  All  this  is  quite  over  and 
above  such  writing  of  facts  at  first  hand  as  Mr.  Pat- 
rick McGill  and  a  dozen  other  real  experiencing 
soldiers, —  not  to  mention  the  soldiers'  letters  Mr. 
James  Milne  has  collected,  or  the  unforgettable  and 
immortal  Prisoner  of  War  of  Mr.  Arthur  Green  — 
or  such  admirable  war  correspondents'  work  as  Mr. 
Philip  Gibbs  or  Mr.  Washburne  has  done.  Some  of 
us  writers  —  I  can  answer  for  one  —  have  made  our 
Tour  of  the  Fronts  with  a  verv  understandable  diflfi- 
dence.     For  my  own  part  I  did  not  want  to  go.     I 


THE  PASSING  OF  THE  EFFIGY  5 

evaded  a  suggestion  that  I  should  go  in  1915.  I 
travel  badly,  I  speak  French  and  Italian  with  in- 
credible atrocity,  and  am  an  extreme  Pacifist.  I 
hate  soldiering.  And  also  I  did  not  want  to  write 
anything  "  under  instruction."  It  is  largely  owing 
to  a  certain  stiffness  in  the  composition  of  General 
Delme-Radcliffe,  the  British  Military  Attache  at 
the  Italian  Comando  Supremo,  that  I  was  at  last 
dislodged  upon  this  journey.  General  Delme-Ead- 
cliffe  is  resolved  that  Italy  shall  not  feel  neglected 
by  the  refusal  of  the  invitation  of  the  Comando  Su- 
premo by  any  one  who  from  the  perspective  of  Italy 
may  seem  to  be  a  representative  of  British  opinion. 
If  Herbert  Spencer  had  been  alive  General  Rad- 
cliffe  would  have  certainly  made  him  come,  travel- 
ling-hammock, ear  clips  and  all  —  and  I  am  not 
above  confessing  that  I  wish  that  Herbert  Spencer 
was  alive  —  for  this  purpose.  I  found  Udine  warm 
and  gay  with  memories  of  Mr.  Belloc,  Lord  North- 
cliffe,  Mr.  Sidney  Low,  Colonel  Repington  and  Dr. 
Conan  Doyle,  and  anticipating  the  arrival  of  Mr. 
Harold  Cox.  So  we  pass,  mostly  in  automobiles 
that  bump  tremendously  over  war  roads,  a  cloud  of 
witnesses  each  testifying  after  his  manner.  What- 
ever else  has  happened  we  have  all  been  photo- 
graphed with  invincible  patience  and  resolution 
under  the  direction  of  Colonel  Barberich  in  a  sunny 
little  court  in  Udine. 


^ 


6  ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

My  own  manner  of  te«tif  jing  must  be  to  tell  wliat 
I  have  seen  and  what  I  have  thought  during  this 
extraordinary  experience.  It  has  been  my  natural 
disj)Osition  to  see  this  war  as  something  purposeful 
and  epic,  as  something  fundamentally  as  splendid 
as  it  is  great,  as  an  epoch,  as  "  the  War  that  will 
end  War  " —  but  of  that  last,  more  anon.  I  do  not 
think  I  am  alone  in  this  inclination  to  a  dramatic 
and  logical  interpretation.  The  caricatures  in  the 
French  shops  show  civilisation  (and  particularly 
Marianne)  in  conflict  with  a  huge  and  hugely 
wicked  Hindenburg  Ogre.  Well,  I  come  back  from 
this  tour  with  something  not  quite  so  simple  as  that. 
If  I  were  to  be  tied  down  to  one  word  for  my  impres- 
sion of  this  war,  I  should  say  that  this  war  is 
Queer,  It  is  not  like  anything  in  a  really  waking 
world,  but  like  something  in  a  dream.  It  hasn't 
exactly  that  clearness  of  light  against  darkness  or 
of  good  against  ill.  But  it  has  the  quality  of  whole- 
some instinct  struggling  under  a  nightmare.  The 
world  is  not  really  awake.  This  vague  appeal  for 
explanations  to  all  sorts  of  people,  this  desire  to 
exhibit  the  business,  to  get  something  in  the  way  of 
elucidation  at  present  missing,  is  extraordinarily 
suggestive  of  the  efforts  of  the  mind  to  wake  up  that 
will  sometimes  occur  at  a  dream  crisis.  My  mem- 
ory of  this  tour  I  have  just  made  is  full  of  puzzled- 
looking  men.     I  have  seen  thousands  of  poilus  sit- 


THE  PASSING  OF  THE  EFFIGY  7 

ting  about  in  cafes,  by  the  roadside,  in  tents,  in 
trenches,  thoughtful.  I  have  seen  Alpini  sitting 
restfully  and  staring  with  speculative  eyes  across 
the  mountain  gulfs  towards  unseen  and  unaccount- 
able enemies.  I  have  seen  trainloads  of  wounded 
staring  out  of  the  ambulance  train  windows  as  we 
passed.  I  have  seen  these  dim  intimations  of  ques- 
tioning reflection  in  the  strangest  juxtapositions ;  in 
Malasgay  soldiers  resting  for  a  spell  among  the  big 
shells  they  were  hoisting  into  trucks  for  the  front, 
in  a  couple  of  khaki-clad  Maoris  sitting  upon  the 
step  of  a  horse-van  in  Amiens  station.  It  is  al- 
ways the  same  expression  one  catches,  rather  weary, 
rather  sullen,  inturned.  The  shoulders  droop. 
The  very  outline  is  a  note  of  interrogation.  They 
look  up  as  the  privileged  tourist  of  the  front,  in  the 
big  automobile  or  the  reserved  compartment,  with 
his  officer  or  so  in  charge,  passes  —  importantly. 
One  meets  a  pair  of  eyes  that  seems  to  say :  "  per- 
haps you  understand.  .  .  . 

"In  which  case .  .  .?" 

It  is  a  part,  I  think,  of  this  disposition  to  investi- 
gate that  makes  every  one  collect  "  specimens  "  of 
the  war.  Everywhere  the  souvenir  forces  itself 
upon  the  attention.  The  homecoming  permission- 
aire  brings  with  him  invariably  a  considerable 
weight  of  broken  objects,  bits  of  shell,  cartridge 
clips,  helmets ;  it  is  a  peripatetic  museum.     It  is  as 


8  ITALY,  FEANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

if  he  hoped  for  a  clue.  It  is  almost  impossible,  I 
have  found,  to  escape  these  pieces  in  evidence.  I 
am  the  least  collecting  of  men,  but  I  have  brought 
home  Italian  cartridges,  Austrian  cartridges,  the 
fuse  of  an  Austrian  shell,  a  broken  Italian  bayonet, 
and  a  note  that  is  worth  half  a  franc  within  the  con- 
fines of  Amiens.  But  a  large  heavy  piece  of  ex- 
ploded shell  that  had  been  thrust  very  urgently 
upon  my  attention  upon  the  Carso  I  contrived  to 
lose  during  the  temporary  confusion  of  our  party 
l)y  the  arrival  and  explosion  of  another  prospective 
souvenir  in  our  close  proximity.  And  two  really 
very  large  and  almost  complete  specimens  of  some 
species  of  Ammoyiites  unknown  to  me,  from  the  hills 
to  the  east  of  the  Adige,  partially  wrapped  in  a  back 
number  of  the  Corriere  della  Sera,  that  were  pressed 
upon  me  by  a  friendly  officer,  were  unfortunately 
lost  on  the  line  between  Verona  and  Milan  through 
the  gross  negligence  of  a  railway  porter.  But  I 
doubt  if  they  would  have  throw^n  any  very  conclusive 
light  upon  the  war. 

§  2 

I  avow  myself  an  extreme  Pacifist.  I  am  against 
the  man  who  first  takes  up  the  weapon.  I  carry 
my  pacifism  far  beyond  the  position  of  that  ambigu- 
ous little  group  of  British  and  foreign  sentimen- 


THE  PASSING  OF  THE  EFFIGY  9 

talists  who  pretend  so  amusingly  to  be  socialists  in 
the  Labour  Leader ,  whose  conception  of  foreign 
policy  is  to  give  Germany  now  a  peace  that  would 
be  no  more  than  a  breathing  time  for  a  fresh  out- 
rage upon  civilisation,  and  who  would  even  make 
heroes  of  the  crazy  young  assassins  of  the  Dublin 
crime.  I  do  not  understand  those  people.  I  do 
not  merely  want  to  stop  this  war.  I  want  to  nail 
down  war  in  its  coffin.  Modem  war  is  an  intoler- 
able thing.  It  is  not  a  thing  to  trifle  with  in  this 
TJ.D.C.  way,  it  is  a  thing  to  end  for  ever.  I  have 
always  hated  it,  so  far  that  is,  as  my  imagination 
had  enabled  me  to  realise  it ;  and  now  that  I  have 
been  seeing  it,  sometimes  quite  closely  for  a  full 
month,  I  hate  it  more  than  ever.  I  never  imagined 
a  quarter  of  its  waste,  its  boredom,  its  futility,  its 
desolation.  It  is  merely  a  destructive  and  disper- 
sive instead  of  a  constructive  and  accumulative  in- 
dustrialism. It  is  a  gigantic,  dusty,  muddy,  weedy, 
bloodstained  silliness.  It  is  the  plain  duty  of  every 
man  to  give  his  life  and  all  that  he  has  if  by  so  do- 
ing he  may  help  to  end  it.  I  hate  Germany,  which 
has  thrust  this  experience  upon  mankind,  as  I  hate 
some  horrible  infectious  disease.  The  new  war,  the 
war  on  the  modern  level,  is  her  invention  and  her 
crime.  I  perceive  that  on  our  side  and  in  its  broad 
outlines,  this  war  is  nothing  more  than  a  gigantic 
and  heroic  effort  in  sanitary  engineering ;  an  effort 


10         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

to  remove  German  militarism  from  the  life  and 
regions  it  has  invaded,  and  to  bank  it  in  and  dis- 
credit and  enfeeble  it  so  that  never  more  will  it  re- 
peat its  present  preposterous  and  horrible  efforts. 
All  human  affairs  and  all  great  affairs  have  their 
reservations  and  their  complications,  but  that  is 
the  broad  outline  of  the  business  as  it  has  impressed 
itself  on  my  mind  and  as  I  find  it  conceived  in  the 
mind  of  the  average  man  of  the  reading  class  among 
the  allied  peoples,  and  as  I  find  it  understood  in  the 
judgment  of  honest  and  intelligent  neutral  ob- 
servers. 

It  is  my  unshakeable  belief  that  essentially  the 
Allies  fight  for  a  permanent  world  peace,  that 
primarily  they  do  not  make  w^ar  but  resist  war,  that 
has  reconciled  me  to  this  not  very  congenial  expe- 
rience of  touring  as  a  spectator  all  agog  to  see, 
through  the  war  zones.  At  any  rate  there  was  never 
any  risk  of  my  playing  Balaam  and  blessing  the 
enemy.  This  war  was  tragedy  and  sacrifice  for 
most  of  the  Tvorld  for  the  Germans  it  is  simply  the 
catastrophic  outcome  of  fifty  years  of  elaborate  in- 
tellectual foolery.  Militarism,  Welt  Politik,  and 
here  we  are !  What  else  could  have  happened,  with 
Michael  and  his  infernal  War  Machine  in  the  very 
centre  of  Europe,  but  this  tremendous  disaster? 

It  is  a  disaster.  It  may  be  a  necessary  disaster; 
it  may  teach  a  lesson  that  could  be  learnt  in  no 


THE  PASSING  OF  THE  EFFIGY        11 

other  way;  but  for  all  that,  I  insist,  it  remains 
waste,  disorder,  disaster. 

There  is  a  disposition,  I  know,  in  myself  as  well 
as  in  others,  to  wriggle  away  from  this  verity,  to 
find  so  much  good  in  the  collapse  that  has  come  to 
the  mad  direction  of  Europe  for  the  past  half  cen- 
tury as  to  make  it  on  the  whole  almost  a  beneficial 
thing.  But  at  most  I  can  find  in  it  no  greater  good 
than  the  good  of  a  nightmare  that  awakens  a  sleeper 
in  a  dangerous  place  to  a  realisation  of  the  extreme 
danger  of  his  sleep.  Better  had  he  been  awake  — 
or  never  there.  In  Venetia  Captain  Pirelli,  whose 
task  it  was  to  keep  me  out  of  mischief  in  the  war 
zone,  was  insistent  upon  the  w'ay  in  which  all 
Venetia  was  being  opened  up  by  the  new^  military 
roads ;  there  has  been  scarcely  a  new  road  made  in 
Venetia  since  Napoleon  drove  his  straight,  poplar- 
bordered  highways  through  the  land.  M.  Joseph 
Reinach,  w^ho  was  my  companion  upon  the  French 
front,  was  equally  impressed  by  the  stirring  up  and 
exchange  of  ideas  in  the  villages  due  to  the  move- 
ment of  the  war.  Charles  Lamb's  story  of  the  dis- 
covery of  roast  pork  comes  into  one's  head  with  an 
effect  of  repartee.  More  than  ideas  are  exchanged 
in  the  war  zone,  and  it  is  doubtful  how  far  the  sani- 
tary precautions  of  the  military  authorities  avails 
against  a  considerable  propaganda  of  disease.  A 
more  serious  argument  for  the  good  of  war  is  that 


12         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

it  evokes  heroic  qualities  in  common  people.  There 
is  no  denying  that  it  has  brought  out  almost  in- 
credible quantities  of  courage,  devotion,  and  indi- 
vidual romance  that  did  not  show  in  the  suffocating 
peace  time  that  preceded  the  war.  The  reckless  and 
beautiful  zeal  of  the  women  in  the  British  and 
French  munition  factories,  for  example,  the  gaiety 
and  fearlessness  of  the  common  soldiers  everywhere ; 
these  things  have  always  been  there  —  like  cham- 
pagne sleeping  in  bottles  in  a  cellar.  But  was 
there  any  need  to  throw  a  bomb  into  the  cellar? 

I  am  reminded  of  a  story,  or  rather  of  the  idea  for 
a  story  that  I  think  I  must  have  read  in  that  curi- 
ous collection  of  fantasies  and  observations,  Haw- 
thorne's Isfote  Booh.  It  was  to  be  the  story  of  a 
man  who  found  life  dull  and  his  circumstances  al- 
together mediocre.  He  had  loved  his  wife,  but  now 
after  all  she  seemed  to  be  a  very  ordinary  human 
being.  He  had  begun  life  with  high  hopes  —  and 
life  was  commonplace.  He  was  to  grow  fretful  and 
restless.  His  discontent  was  to  lead  to  some  action, 
some  irrevocable  action ;  but  upon  the  nature  of  that 
action  I  do  not  think  the  l^ote  Book  was  very  clear. 
It  was  to  carry  him  to  the  burning  of  his  house. 
It  was  to  carry  him  in  such  a  manner  that  he  was  to 
forget  his  wife.  Then,  w  hen  it  was  too  late,  he  was 
to  see  her  at  an  upper  window,  stripped  and  firelit, 


THE  PASSING  OF  THE  EFFIGY        13 

a  glorious  thing  of  light  and  loveliness  and  tragic 
intensity.  .  .  . 

The  elementary  tales  of  the  world  are  veiy  few, 
and  Hawthorne's  story  and  Lamb's  story  are,  after 
all,  only  variations  upon  the  same  theme.  But  can 
we  poor  human  beings  never  realise  our  quality 
without  destruction? 


§  3 

One  of  the  larger  singularities  of  the  great  war  is 
its  failure  to  produce  great  and  imposing  personali- 
ties, mighty  leaders.  Napoleons,  Caesars.  I  would 
indeed  make  that  the  essential  thing  in  my  reckon- 
ing up  of  the  war.  It  is  a  drama  without  a  hero ; 
with  countless  incidental  heroes  no  doubt,  but  no 
star  part.  Even  the  Germans,  with  a  national  pre- 
disposition for  hero-cults  and  living  still  in  an  at- 
mosphere of  Victorian  humbug,  can  produce  noth- 
ing better  than  that  timber  image,  Hindenburg. 

It  is  not  that  the  war  has  failed  to  produce  heroes 
so  much  as  that  it  has  produced  heroism  in  a  tor- 
rent. The  great  man  of  this  war  is  the  common 
man.  It  becomes  ridiculous  to  pick  out  particular 
names.  There  are  too  many  true  stories  of  splendid 
acts  in  the  past  two  years  ever  to  be  properly  set 
down.     The  V.C.'s  and  the  palms  do  but  indicate 


14         ITALY,  FKANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

samples.  One  would  need  an  encyclopaedia,  a  row 
of  volumes,  of  the  gloriousness  of  human  impulses. 
The  acts  of  the  small  men  in  this  war  dwarf  all 
the  pretensions  of  the  Great  Man.  Imperatively 
these  multitudinous  heroes  forbid  the  setting  up  of 
effigies.  When  I  was  a  young  man  I  imitated  Swift 
and  posed  for  cynicism ;  I  will  confess  that  now  at 
fifty  and  greatly  helped  by  this  war,  I  have  fallen  in 
love  with  mankind. 

But  if  I  had  to  pick  out  a  single  figure  to  stand 
for  the  finest  quality  of  the  Allies'  war,  I  should  I 
think  choose  the  figure  of  General  Joffre.  He  is 
something  new  in  history.  He  is  leadership  with- 
out vulgar  ambition.  He  is  the  extreme  antithesis 
to  the  Imperial  boomster  of  Berlin.  He  is  as  it 
were  the  ordinary  commonsense  of  men,  incarnate. 
He  is  the  antithesis  of  the  effigy. 

By  great  good  luck  I  was  able  to  see  him.  I  was 
delayed  in  Paris  on  my  way  to  Italy,  and  my  friend 
Captain  Millet  arranged  for  a  visit  to  the  French 
front  at  Soissons  and  put  me  in  charge  of  Lieu- 
tenant de  Tessin,  whom  I  had  met  in  England  study- 
ing British  social  questions  long  before  this  war. 
Afterwards  Lieutenant  de  Tessin  took  me  to  the 
great  hotel  —  it  still  proclaims  ^' Restaurant^'  in 
big  black  letters  on  the  garden  wall  —  which 
shelters  the  General  Headquarters  of  France,  and 
here  I  was  able  to  see  and  talk  to  Generals  Pelle 


THE  PASSING  OF  THE  EFFIGY        15 

and  Castelnau  as  well  as  to  General  Joffre.  Thej 
are  three  very  remarkable  and  very  different  men. 
They  have  at  least  one  thing  in  common ;  it  is  clear 
that  not  one  of  them  has  spent  ten  minutes  in  all  his 
life  in  thinking  of  himself  as  a  Personage  or  Great 
Man.  They  all  have  the  effect  of  being  active  and 
able  men  doing  an  extremely  complicated  and  diffi- 
cult but  extremely  interesting  job  to  the  very  best  of 
their  ability.  With  me  they  had  all  one  quality 
in  common.  They  thought  I  was  interested  in  what 
they  were  doing,  and  they  were  quite  prepared  to 
treat  me  as  an  intelligent  man  of  a  different  sort, 
and  to  show  me  as  much  as  I  could  understand.  .  .  . 

Let  me  confess  that  de  Tessin  had  had  to  persuade 
me  to  go  to  Headquarters.  Partly  that  was  because 
I  didn't  want  to  use  up  even  ten  minutes  of  the  time 
of  the  French  commanders,  but  much  more  was  it 
because  I  have  a  dread  of  Personages. 

There  is  something  about  these  encounters  with 
personages  —  as  if  one  was  dealing  with  an  effigy, 
with  something  tremendous  put  up  to  be  seen.  As 
one  approaches  they  become  remoter;  great  unsus- 
pected crevasses  are  discovered.  Across  these  gulfs 
one  makes  ineffective  gestures.  They  do  not  meet 
you,  they  pose  at  you  enormously.  Sometimes 
there  is  something  more  terrible  than  dignity ;  there 
is  condescension.  They  are  affable.  I  had  but  re- 
cently had  an  encounter  with  an  imported  Colonial 


16         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

statesman,  who  was  being  advertised  like  a  soap  as 
the  coming  saviour  of  England.  I  was  curious  to 
meet  him.  I  wanted  to  talk  to  him  about  all  sorts 
of  things  that  would  have  been  profoundly  interest- 
ing, as  for  example  his  impressions  of  the  Anglican 
bishops.  But  I  met  a  hoarding.  I  met  a  thing  like 
a  mask,  something  surrounded  by  touts,  that  was 
dully  trying  —  as  we  say  in  London  —  to  "  come  it  " 
over  me.  He  said  he  had  heard  of  me.  He  had 
read  Eipps.  I  intimated  that  though  I  had  written 
Kipps  I  had  continued  to  exist  —  but  he  did  not  see 
the  point  of  that.  I  said  certain  things  to  him 
about  the  difference  in  complexity  between  political 
life  in  Great  Britain  and  the  colonies,  that  he  was 
manifestly  totally  incapable  of  understanding. 
But  one  could  as  soon  have  talked  with  one  of  the 
statesmen  at  Madame  Tussaud's.  An  antiquated 
figure. 

The  effect  of  these  French  commanders  upon  me 
was  quite  different  from  my  encounter  with  that 
last  belated  adventurer  in  the  effigy  line.  I  felt  in- 
deed that  I  was  a  rather  idle  and  flimsy  person  com- 
ing into  the  presence  of  a  tremendously  compact  and 
busy  person,  but  I  had  none  of  that  unpleasant  sen- 
sation of  a  conventional  role,  of  being  expected  to 
play  the  minute  worshipper  in  the  presence  of  the 
Great  Image.  I  was  so  moved  by  the  common  hu- 
manity of  them  all  that  in  each  case  I  broke  away 


THE  PASSING  OF  THE  EFFIGY        17 

from  the  discreet  interpretations  of  de  Tessin  and 
talked  to  them  directly  in  the  strange  dialect  which 
I  have  inadvertently  made  for  myself  out  of  French, 
a  disemvowelled  speech  of  epicene  substantives  and 
verbs  of  incalculable  moods  and  temperaments, 
^"Entente  Cordiale.''  They  talked  back  as  if  we 
had  met  in  a  club.  General  Pelle  pulled  my  leg 
very  gaily  with  some  quotations  from  an  article  I 
had  written  upon  the  conclusion  of  the  war.  I 
think  he  found  my  accent  and  my  idioms  very  re- 
freshing. I  had  committed  myself  to  a  statement 
that  Bloch  has  been  justified  in  his  theory  that 
under  modern  conditions  the  defensive  wins.  There 
were  excellent  reasons,  and  General  Pelle  pointed 
them  out,  for  doubting  the  applicability  of  this  to 
the  present  war. 

Both  he  and  General  Castelnau  were  anxious  that 
I  should  see  a  French  offensive  sector  as  w^ell  as 
Soissons.  Then  I  should  understand.  And  since 
then  I  have  returned  from  Italy  and  I  have  seen  and 
I  do  understand.  The  Allied  offensive  was  win- 
ning; that  is  to  say,  it  was  inflicting  far  greater 
losses  than  it  experienced;  it  was  steadily  beating 
the  spirit  out  of  the  German  army  and  shoving  it 
back  towards  Germany.  Only  peace  can,  I  believe, 
prevent  the  western  war  ending  in  Germany.  And 
it  is  the  Frenchmen  mainly  who  have  worked  out 
how  to  do  it. 


18         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

But  of  that  I  will  write  later.  My  present  con- 
cern is  with  General  Joffre  as  the  antithesis  of  the 
Efifigy.     The  emgy, 

"Thou  Prince  of  Peace, 
Thou  God  of  War," 

as  Mr.  Sylvester  Viereck  called  him,  prances  on  a 
great  horse,  wears  a  Wagnerian  cloak,  sits  on 
thrones  and  talks  of  shining  armour  and  "  unser 
Gott."  All  Germany  gloats  over  his  Jovian  domes- 
ticities; when  I  was  last  in  Berlin  the  postcard 
shops  were  full  of  photographs  of  a  sort  of  proces- 
sion of  himself  and  his  sons,  all  with  long  straight 
noses  and  side-long  eyes.  It  is  all  dreadfully  old- 
fashioned.  General  Joffre  sits  in  a  pleasant  little 
sitting-room  in  a  very  ordinary  little  villa  conven- 
iently close  to  Headquarters.  He  sits  among  furni- 
ture that  has  no  quality  of  pose  at  all,  that  is  neither 
magnificent  nor  ostentatiously  simple  and  hardy. 
He  has  dark,  rather  sleepy  eyes  under  light  eye- 
lashes, eyes  that  glance  shyly  and  a  little  askance 
at  his  interlocutor  and  then,  as  he  talks,  away  —  as 
if  he  did  not  want  to  be  preoccupied  by  your  atten- 
tion. He  has  a  broad,  rather  broadly  modelled  face, 
a  soft  voice,  the  sort  of  persuasive  reasoning  voice 
that  many  Scotchmen  have.  I  had  a  feeling  that 
if  he  were  to  talk  Eiiglish  he  would  do  so  with  a 
Scotch  accent.     Perhaps  somewhere  I  have  met  a 


THE  PASSING  OP  THE  EFFIGY        19 

Scotchman  of  his  type.  He  sat  sideways  to  hi& 
table  as  a  man  might  sit  for  a  gossip  in  a  cafe. 

He  is  physically  a  big  man,  and  in  my  memory  he 
grows  bigger  and  bigger.  He  sits  now  in  my  mem- 
ory in  a  room  like  the  rooms  that  any  decent 
people  might  occupy,  like  that  vague  room  that  is 
the  background  of  so  many  good  portraits,  a  great 
blue-coated  figure  with  a  soft  voice  and  rather  tired 
eyes,  explaining  very  simply  and  clearly  the  diffi- 
culties that  this  vulgar  imperialism  of  Germany, 
seizing  upon  modern  science  and  modern  appli- 
ances, has  created  for  France  and  the  spirit  of  man- 
kind. 

He  talked  chiefly  of  the  strangeness  of  this  con- 
founded war.  It  was  exactly  like  a  sanitary  en- 
gineer speaking  of  the  unexpected  difficulties  of 
some  particularly  nasty  inundation.  He  made  lit- 
tle stiff  horizontal  gestures  of  his  hands.  First  one 
had  to  build  a  dam  and  stop  the  rush  of  it,  so ;  then 
one  had  to  organise  the  push  that  w^ould  send  it 
back.  He  explained  the  organisation  of  the  push. 
They  had  got  an  organisation  now  that  was  working- 
out  most  satisfactorily.  Had  I  seen  a  sector?  I 
had  seen  the  sector  of  Soissons.  Yes,  but  that  was 
not  now  an  offensive  sector.  I  must  see  an  of- 
fensive sector;  see  the  whole  method.  Lieutenant 
de  Tessin  must  see  that  that  was  arranged.  .  .  . 

Neither  he  nor  his  two  colleagiies  spoke  of  the 


20         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

Germans  with  either  hostility  or  humanity.  Ger- 
many for  them  is  manifestly  merely  an  objection- 
able Thing.  It  is  not  a  nation,  not  a  people,  but  a 
nuisance.  One  has  to  build  up  this  great  counter 
thrust  bigger  and  stronger  until  they  go  back.  The 
war  must  end  in  Germany.  The  French  generals 
have  no  such  delusions  about  German  science  or 
foresight  or  capacity  as  dominates  the  smart  dinner 
chatter  of  England.  One  knows  so  well  that  de- 
testable type  of  English  folly,  and  its  voice  of  de- 
spair :  "  They  plan  everything.  They  foresee 
everything."  This  paralysing  Germanophobia  is 
not  common  among  the  French.  The  war,  the 
French  generals  said,  might  take  —  well,  it  cer- 
tainly looked  like  taking  longer  than  the  winter. 
Next  summer  perhaps.  Probably,  if  nothing  un- 
foreseen occurred,  before  a  full  year  has  passed  the 
job  might  be  done.  Were  any  surprises  in  store? 
They  didn't  seem  to  think  it  was  probable  that  the 
Germans  had  any  surprises  in  store.  .  .  .  The  Ger- 
mans are  not  an  inventive  people ;  they  are  merely  a 
thorough  people.     One  never  knew  for  certain. 

Is  any  greater  contrast  possible  than  between  so 
implacable,  patient,  reasonable  —  and  above  all 
things  capable  —  a  being  as  General  Joff  re  and  the 
rhetorician  of  Potsdam,  with  his  talk  of  German 
Might,  of  Hammer  Blows  and  Hacking  through? 


THE  PASSING  OF  THE  EFFIGY        21 

Can  there  be  any  doubt  of  the  ultimate  issue  be- 
tween them? 

There  are  stories  that  sound  pleasantly  true  to  me 
about  General  Joffre's  ambitions  after  the  war.  He 
is  tired;  then  he  will  be  very  tired.  He  will,  he 
declares,  spend  his  first  free  summer  in  making  a 
tour  of  the  waterways  of  France  in  a  barge.  So  I 
hope  it  may  be.  One  imagines  him  as  sitting 
quietly  on  the  crumpled  remains  of  the  last  and 
tawdriest  of  Imperial  traditions,  with  a  fishing  line 
in  the  placid  water  and  a  large  buff  umbrella  over- 
head, the  good  ordinary  man  who  does  whatever  is 
given  to  him  to  do  —  as  well  as  he  can.  The  power 
that  has  taken  the  great  effigy  of  German  imperial- 
ism by  the  throat  is  something  very  composite  and 
complex,  but  if  we  personify  it  at  all  it  is  something 
more  like  General  Joffre  than  any  other  single 
human  figure  I  can  think  of  or  imagine. 

If  I  were  to  set  a  frontispiece  to  a  book  about  this 
War  I  would  make  General  Joffre  the  frontispiece. 

§  4 

As  we  swung  back  along  the  dusty  road  to  Paris 
at  a  pace  of  fifty  miles  an  hour  and  upwards,  driven 
by  a  helmeted  driver  with  an  aquiline  profile  fit  to 
go  upon  a  coin,  whose  merits  were  a  little  flawed  by 


22         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

a  childish  and  dangerous  ambition  to  run  over  every 
cat  he  saw  upon  the  road,  I  talked  to  de  Tessin 
about  this  big  blue-coated  figure  of  Joffre,  which  is 
not  so  much  a  figure  as  a  great  generalisation  of  cer- 
tain hitherto  rather  obscured  French  qualities,  and 
of  the  impression  he  had  made  upon  me.  And  from 
that  I  went  on  to  talk  about  the  Super  Man,  for  this 
encounter  had  suddenly  crystallised  out  a  set  of 
realisations  that  had  been  for  some  time  latent  in 
my  mind. 

How  much  of  what  follows  I  said  to  de  Tessin  at 
the  time  I  do  not  clearly  remember,  but  this  is  what 
I  had  in  mind. 

The  idea  of  the  superman  is  an  idea  that  has  been 
developed  by  various  people  ignorant  of  biology  and 
unaccustomed  to  biological  ways  of  thinking.  It 
is  an  obvious  idea  that  follows  in  the  course  of  half 
an  hour  or  so  upon  one's  realisation  of  the  signifi- 
cance of  Darwinism.  If  man  has  evolved  from 
something  lower  or  at  least  something  different, 
he  must  now  be  evolving  onward  into  something 
sur-human.  The  species  in  the  future  will  be  dif- 
ferent from  the  species  of  the  past.  So  far  at  least 
our  Nietzsches  and  Shaws  and  so  on  went  right. 

But  being  ignorant  of  the  elementary  biological 
proposition  that  modification  of  a  species  means 
really  a  secular  change  in  its  average,  they  jumped 
to  a  conclusion  —  to  which  the  late  Lord  Salisbury 


THE  PASSING  OF  THE  EFFIGY        23 

also  jumped  years  ago  at  a  very  memorable  British 
Association  meeting  —  that  a  species  is  modified  by 
the  sudden  appearance  of  eccentric  individuals  here 
and  there  in  the  general  mass  who  interbreed — ■ 
preferentially.  Helped  by  a  streak  of  antic  egotism 
in  themselves,  they  conceived  of  the  superman  as 
a  posturing  personage,  misunderstood  by  the  vulgar, 
fantastic,  wonderful.  But  the  antic  Personage,  the 
thing  I  have  called  the  Effigy,  is  not  new  but  old, 
the  oldest  thing  in  history,  the  departing  thing.  It 
depends  not  upon  the  advance  of  the  species  but 
upon  the  uncritical  hero-worship  of  the  crowd. 
You  may  see  the  monster  drawn  twenty  times  the 
size  of  common  men  upon  the  oldest  monuments  of 
Egypt  and  Assyria.  The  true  superman  comes  not 
as  the  tremendous  personal  entry  of  a  star,  but  in 
the  less  dramatic  form  of  a  general  increase  of  good- 
will and  skill  and  commonsense,  A  species  rises 
not  by  thrusting  up  peaks  but  by  brimming  up  as 
a  flood  does.  The  coming  of  the  superman  means 
not  an  epidemic  of  personages  but  the  disajipear- 
ance  of  the  Personage  in  the  universal  ascent. 
That  is  the  point  overlooked  by  the  megalomaniac 
school  of  Nietzsche  and  Shaw. 

And  it  is  the  peculiarity  of  this  war,  it  is  the  most 
reassuring  evidence  that  a  great  increase  in  general 
ability  and  critical  ability  has  been  going  on 
throughout  the  last  century,  that  no  isolated  great 


24         ITALY,  FKANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

personages  have  emerged.  Never  has  there  been  so 
much  ability,  invention,  inspiration,  leadership ;  but 
the  very  abundance  of  good  qualities  has  prevented 
our  focusing  upon  those  of  any  one  individual.  We 
all  play  our  part  in  the  realisation  of  God's  sanity 
in  the  world,  but,  as  the  strange,  dramatic  end  of 
Lord  Kitchener  has  served  to  remind  us,  there  is  no 
single  individual  of  all  the  allied  nations  whose 
death  can  materially  affect  the  great  destinies  of 
this  war. 

In  the  last  few  years  I  have  developed  a  re- 
ligious belief  that  has  become  now  to  me  as  real  as 
any  commonplace  fact.  I  think  that  mankind  is 
still,  as  it  were,  collectively  dreaming  and  hardly 
more  awakened  to  reality  than  a  very  young  child. 
It  has  these  dreams  that  we  express  by  the  flags  of 
nationalities  and  by  strange  loyalties  and  by  irra- 
tional creeds  and  ceremonies,  and  its  dreams  at 
times  become  such  nightmares  as  this  war.  But 
the  time  draws  near  when  mankind  will  awake  and 
the  dreams  will  fade  away,  and  then  there  will  be  no 
nationality  in  all  the  world  but  humanity,  and  no 
king,  no  emperor,  nor  leader  but  the  one  God  of 
mankind.  This  is  my  faith.  I  am  as  certain  of  this 
as  I  was  in  1900  that  men  would  presently  fly.  To 
me  it  is  as  if  it  must  be  so. 

So  that  to  me  this  extraordinary  refusal  of  the 
allied  nations  under  conditions  that  have  always 


THE  PASSING  OF  THE  EFFIGY        25 

hitherto  produced  a  Great  Man  to  produce  any- 
thing of  the  sort,  anything  that  can  be  used  as  an 
effigy  and  carried  about  for  the  crowd  to  follow,  is  a 
fact  of  extreme  significance  and  encouragement. 
It  seems  to  me  that  the  twilight  of  the  half  gods 
must  have  come,  that  we  have  reached  the  end  of  the 
age  when  men  needed  a  Personal  Figure  about 
which  they  could  rally.  The  Kaiser  is  perhaps  the 
last  of  that  long  series  of  crowned  and  cloaked  and 
semi-divine  personages  w^hich  has  included  Csesar 
and  Alexander  and  Napoleon  the  First  —  and 
Third.  In  the  light  of  the  new  time  we  see  the  em- 
peror God  for  the  guy  he  is.  In  the  August  of  1914 
he  set  himself  up  to  be  the  paramount  Lord  of  the 
World,  and  it  will  seem  to  the  historian  to  come, 
who  will  know  our  dates  so  w^ell  and  our  feelings, 
our  fatigues  and  efforts  so  little,  it  will  seem  a  short 
period  from  that  day  to  this,  when  the  great  figure 
already  sways  and  staggers  towards  the  bonfire. 


§  5 

I  had  the  experience  of  meeting  a  contemporary 
king  upon  this  journey.  He  was  the  first  king  I  had 
ever  met.  The  Potsdam  figure  —  with  perhaps 
some  local  exceptions  behind  the  gold  coast  —  is, 
with  its  collection  of  uniforms  and  its  pomps  and 
splendours,  the  purest  survival  of  the  old  tradition 


26        ITALY,  FEANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

of  divine  monarchy  now  that  the  Emperor  at  Pekin 
has  followed  the  Shogun  into  the  shadows.  The 
modern  type  of  king  shows  a  disposition  to  intimate 
at  the  outset  that  he  cannot  help  it,  and  to  justify 
or  at  any  rate  utilise  his  exceptional  position  by 
sound  hard  work.  It  is  an  age  of  working  kings, 
with  the  manners  of  private  gentlemen.  The  King 
of  Italy  for  example  is  far  more  accessible  than  was 
the  late  Pierpont  Morgan  or  the  late  Cecil  Rhodes, 
and  he  seems  to  keep  a  smaller  court. 

I  went  to  see  him  from  Udine.  He  occupied  a 
moderate-sized  country  villa  about  half  an  hour  by 
automobile  from  headquarters.  I  went  over  with 
General  Radcliffe;  we  drove  through  the  gates  of 
the  villa  past  a  single  sentinel  in  an  ordinary  in- 
fantry uniform,  up  to  the  door  of  the  house,  and  the 
number  of  guards,  servants,  court  attendants,  of- 
ficials, secretaries,  ministers  and  the  like  that  I  saw 
in  that  house  were  —  I  counted  very  carefully  — 
four.  Downstairs  were  three  people,  a  tall  soldier 
of  the  bodyguard  in  grey,  an  A.D.C.,  Captain  Mor- 
eno, and  Colonel  Matteoli,  the  minister  of  the 
household.  I  went  upstairs  to  a  drawing-room  of 
much  the  same  easy  and  generalised  character  as  the 
one  in  which  I  had  met  General  Joffre  a  few  days 
before.  I  gave  my  hat  to  a  second  bodyguard,  and 
as  I  did  so  a  pleasantly  smiling  man  appeared  at 
the  door  of  the  study  whom  I  thought  at  first  must 


THE  PASSING  OF  THE  EFFIGY        27 

be  some  minister  in  attendance.  I  did  not  recog- 
nise him  instantly  because  on  the  stamps  and  coins 
he  is  always  in  profile.  He  began  to  talk  in  excel- 
lent English  about  my  journey,  and  I  replied,  and  so 
talking  we  went  into  the  study  from  which  he  had 
emerged.  Then  I  realised  I  was  talking  to  the 
king. 

Addicted  as  I  am  to  the  cinematograph,  in  which 
the  standard  of  study  furniture  is  particularly  rich 
and  high,  I  found  something  very  cooling  and  simple 
and  refreshing  in  the  sight  of  the  king's  study  furni- 
ture: He  sat  down  with  me  at  a  little  useful  writ- 
ing-table, and  after  asking  me  what  I  had  seen  in 
Italy  and  hearing  what  I  had  seen  and  w^hat  I  was 
to  see,  he  went  on  talking,  very  good  talk  indeed. 

I  suppose  I  did  a  little  exceed  the  established  tra- 
dition of  courts  by  asking  several  questions  and  try- 
ing to  get  him  to  talk  upon  certain  points  upon 
which  I  was  curious,  but  I  perceived  that  he  had  had 
to  carry  on  at  least  so  much  of  the  regal  tradition 
as  to  control  the  conversation.  He  was,  however, 
entirely  un-posed.  His  talk  reminded  me  some- 
how of  Maurice  Baring's  books ;  it  had  just  the  same 
quick,  positive  understanding.  And  he  had  just  the 
same  detachment  from  the  war  as  the  French  gen- 
erals. He  spoke  of  it  —  as  one  might  speak  of  an 
inundation.     And  of  its  difficulties  and  perplexities. 

Here  on  the  Adriatic  side  there  were  political  en- 


28         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

tanglements  that  by  comparison  made  our  western 
af  ter-the-war  problems  plain  sailing.  He  talked  of 
the  game  of  spellicans  among  the  Balkan  nation- 
alities. How  was  that  difficulty  to  be  met?  In 
Macedonia  there  were  Turkish  villages  that  were 
Christian  and  Bulgarians  that  w^ere  Moslem. 
There  were  families  that  changed  the  termination 
of  their  names  from  ski  to  off  as  Serbian  or  Bul- 
garian prevailed.  I  remarked  that  that  showed  a 
certain  passion  for  peace,  and  that  much  of  the  mis- 
chief might  be  due  to  the  propaganda  of  the  great 
powers.  I  have  a  prejudice  against  that  blessed 
Whig  "  principle  of  nationality,"  but  the  King  of 
Italy  was  not  to  be  drawn  into  any  statement  about 
that.  He  left  the  question  with  his  admission  of  its 
extreme  complexity. 

He  went  on  to  talk  of  the  strange  contrasts  of 
war,  of  such  things  as  the  indifference  of  the  birds 
to  gunfire  and  desolation.  One  day  on  the  Carso 
he  had  been  near  the  newly  captured  Austrian 
trenches,  and  suddenly  from  amidst  a  scattered 
mass  of  Austrian  bodies  a  quail  had  risen.  That 
had  struck  him  as  odd,  and  so  too  had  the  sight  of  a 
pack  of  cards  and  a  wine  flask  on  some  newly  made 
graves.  The  ordinary  life  was  a  very  obstinate 
thing.  .  .  . 

He  talked  of  the  courage  of  common  men.  He 
was  astonished  at  the  quickness  with  which  they 


THE  PASSING  OF  THE  EFFIGY        29 

came  to  disregard  shrapnel.  And  they  were  so 
quietly  enduring  when  they  were  wounded.  He  had 
seen  a  lot  of  the  wounded,  and  he  had  expected  much 
groaning  and  crying  out.  But  unless  a  man  is  hit 
in  the  head  and  goes  mad  he  does  not  groan  or 
scream!  They  are  just  brave.  If  you  ask  them 
how  they  feel  it  is  always  one  of  two  things :  either 
they  say  quietly  that  they  are  very  bad  or  else  they 
say  there  is  nothing  the  matter.  .  .  . 

He  spoke  as  if  these  were  mere  chance  observa- 
tions, but  every  one  tells  me  that  nearly  every  day 
the  king  is  at  the  front  and  often  under  fire.  He 
has  taken  more  risks  in  a  week  than  the  Potsdam 
War  Lord  has  taken  since  the  war  began.  He  keeps 
himself  acutely  informed  upon  every  aspect  of  the 
war.  He  was  a  little  inclined  to  fatalism,  he  con- 
fessed. There  were  two  stories  current  of  two  fami- 
lies of  four  sons,  in  each  three  had  been  killed  and  in 
each  there  was  an  attempt  to  put  the  fourth  son  in  a 
place  of  comparative  safety.  In  one  case  a  general 
took  the  fourth  son  in  as  an  attendant  and  embarked 
upon  a  ship  that  was  immediately  torpedoed ;  in  the 
other  the  fourth  son  was  killed  by  accident  while  he 
was  helping  to  carry  dinner  in  a  rest  camp.  From 
those  stories  we  came  to  the  question  whether  the 
uneducated  Italians  were  more  superstitious  than 
the  uneducated  English ;  the  king  thought  they  were 
much  less  so.     That  struck  me  as  a  novel  idea.     But 


30         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

then  he  thought  that  English  rural  people  believe  in 
witches  and  fairies. 

I  have  given  enough  of  this  talk  to  show  the 
quality  of  this  king  of  the  new  dispensation.  It 
was,  you  see,  the  sort  of  easy  talk  one  might  hear 
from  fine-minded  people  anywhere.  When  we  had 
done  talking  he  came  to  the  door  of  the  study  with 
me  and  shook  hands  and  w^ent  back  to  his  desk  — 
with  that  gesture  of  return  to  work  which  is  very 
familiar  and  sympathetic  to  a  w^riter,  and  with  no 
gesture  of  regality  at  all. 

Just  to  complete  this  impression  let  me  repeat  a 
pleasant  story  about  this  king  and  our  Prince  of 
Wales,  who  recently  visited  the  Italian  front.  The 
Prince  is  a  source  of  anxiety  on  these  visits ;  he  has  a 
very  strong  and  very  creditable  desire  to  share  the 
ordinary  risks  of  war.  He  is  keenly  interested,  and 
unobtrusively  bent  upon  getting  as  near  the  fighting 
line  as  possible.  But  the  King  of  Italy  was  firm 
upon  keeping  him  out  of  anything  more  than  the 
most  incidental  danger.  "  We  don't  want  any  his- 
torical incidents  here,"  he  said.  I  think  that  might 
well  become  an  historical  phrase.  For  the  life  of 
the  Effigy  is  a  series  of  historical  incidents. 

§  6 

Manifestly  one  might  continue  to  multiply  por- 
traits of  fine  people  working  upon  this  great  task  of 


THE  PASSING  OF  THE  EFFIGY        31 

breaking  and  ending  the  German  aggression,  tlie 
German  legend,  the  German  efiSgy,  and  the  effigy 
business  generally ;  the  thesis  being  that  the  Allies 
have  no  effigy.  One  might  fill  a  thick  volume  with 
pictures  of  men  up  the  scale  and  down  working 
loyally  and  devotedly  upon  the  war,  to  make  this 
point  clear  that  the  essential  king  and  the  essential 
loyalty  of  our  side  is  the  commonsense  of  mankind. 
There  comes  into  my  head  as  a  picture  at  the 
other  extreme  of  this  series,  a  memory  of  certain 
trenches  I  visited  on  my  last  day  in  France.  They 
were  trenches  on  an  offensive  front ;  they  were  not 
those  architectural  triumphs,  those  homes  from 
home,  that  grow  to  perfection  upon  the  less  active 
sections  of  the  great  line.  They  had  been  first  made 
by  men  who  had  run  rapidly  forward  with  spade 
and  rifle,  stooping  as  they  ran,  who  had  dropped 
into  the  craters  of  big  shells,  who  had  organised 
these  chiefly  at  night  and  dug  the  steep  ditches  side- 
ways to  join  up  into  continuous  trenches.  They 
were  now  pushing  forward  saps  into  No  Man's 
Land,  linking  them  across,  and  so  continually  creep- 
ing nearer  to  the  enemy  and  a  practicable  jumping- 
off  place  for  an  attack.  (It  has  been  made  since; 
the  village  at  which  I  peeped  was  in  our  hands  a 
week  later. )  These  trenches  were  dug  into  a  sort  of 
yellowish  sandy  clay ;  the  dug-outs  were  mere  holes 
in  the  earth  that  fell  in  upon  the  clumsy ;  hardly  any 


32         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

timber  had  been  got  up  to  the  line ;  a  storm  might 
flood  them  at  any  time  a  couple  of  feet  deep  and 
begin  to  wash  in  the  sides.  Oveiaiight  they  had 
been  "  strafed  "  and  there  had  been  a  number  of 
casualties;  there  were  smashed  rifles  about  and  a 
smashed-up  machine  gun  emplacement,  and  the  men 
were  dog-tired  and  many  of  them  sleeping  like  logs, 
half  buried  in  clay.  Some  slept  on  the  firing  steps. 
As  one  w^ent  along  one  became  aware  ever  and  again 
of  two  or  three  pairs  of  clay-yellow  feet  sticking  out 
of  a  clay  hole,  and  peering  down  one  saw  the  shapes 
of  men  like  rudely  modelled  earthen  images  of  sol- 
diers, motionless  in  the  cave. 

I  came  round  the  corner  upon  a  youngster  with  an 
intelligent  face  and  steady  eyes  sitting  up  on  the 
firing  step,  awake  and  thinking.  We  looked  at  one 
another.  There  are  moments  w^hen  mind  leaps  to 
mind.  It  is  natural  for  the  man  in  the  trenches 
suddenly  confronted  by  so  rare  a  beast  as  a  middle- 
aged  civilian  with  an  enquiring  expression,  to  feel 
himself  something  of  a  spectacle  and  something  gen- 
eralised. It  is  natural  for  the  civilian  to  look 
rather  in  the  vein  of  saying,  "  Well,  how  do  you 
take  it?  "  As  I  pushed  past  him  we  nodded  slightly 
with  an  effect  of  mutual  understanding.  And  we 
said  with  our  nods  just  exactly  what  General  Joffre 
said  with  his  horizontal  gestures  of  the  hand  and 
what  the  King  of  Italy  conveyed  by  his  friendly 


THE  PASSING  OF  THE  EFFIGY        33 

manner;  we  said  to  each  other  that  here  was  the 
trouble  those  Germans  had  brought  upon  us  and 
here  was  the  task  that  had  to  be  done. 

Our  guide  to  these  trenches  was  a  short,  stocky 
young  man,  a  cob ;  with  a  rifle  and  a  tight  belt  and 
projecting  skirts  and  helmet,  a  queer  little  figure 
that,  had  you  seen  it  in  a  picture  a  year  or  so  before 
the  war,  you  would  most  certainly  have  pronounced 
Chinese.  He  belonged  to  a  Northumbrian  bat- 
talion; it  does  not  matter  exactly  w^hich.  As  we 
returned  from  this  front  line,  trudging  along  the 
winding  path  through  the  barbed  wire  tangles  be- 
fore the  smashed  and  captured  German  trench  that 
had  been  taken  a  fortnight  before,  I  fell  behind  my 
guardian  captain  and  had  a  brief  conversation  with 
this  individual.  He  was  a  lad  in  the  early  twenties, 
weather-bit  and  with  bloodshot  eyes.  He  was,  he 
told  me,  a  miner.  I  asked  my  stock  question  in 
such  cases,  w^hether  he  would  go  back  to  the  old 
work  after  the  war.  He  said  he  would,  and  then 
added  —  with  the  events  of  overnight  in  his  mind : 
"  If  A'hm  looky." 

Followed  a  little  silence.  Then  I  tried  my  second 
stock  remark  for  such  cases.  One  does  not  talk  to 
soldiers  at  the  front  in  this  war  of  Glory  or  the 
"  Empire  on  which  the  sun  never  sets ''  or  "  the 
meteor  flag  of  England  "  or  of  King  and  Country  or 
any  of  those  flne  old  headline  things.     On  the  deso- 


34        ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

late  path  that  winds  about  amidst  the  shell  craters 
and  the  fragments  and  the  red-rusted  wire,  with  the 
silken  shiver  of  passing  shells  in  the  air  and  the  blue 
of  the  lower  sky  continually  breaking  out  into  eddy- 
ing white  puffs,  it  is  wonderful  how  tawdry  such 
panoplies  of  the  ef^gj  appear.  We  know  that  we 
and  our  allies  are  upon  a  greater,  graver,  more 
fundamental  business  than  that  sort  of  thing  now. 
We  are  very  near  the  waking  point. 
"  Well,"  I  said,  "  it's  got  to  be  done." 
"  Aye,"  he  said,  easing  the  strap  of  his  rifle  a  lit- 
tle ;  "  it's  got  to  be  done." 


\ 


THE  WAR  IN  ITALY 

August,  1916 


THE  ISONZO  FRONT 


§  1 


My  first  impressions  of  the  Italian  war  centre  upon 
Udine.  So  far  I  had  had  only  a  visit  to  Soissons  on 
an  exceptionally  quiet  day  and  the  sound  of  a  Zep- 
pelin one  night  in  Essex  for  all  my  experience  of 
actual  warfare.  But  my  bedroom  at  the  British 
mission  in  Udine  roused  perhaps  extravagant  ex- 
pectations. There  were  holes  in  the  plaster  ceiling 
and  wall,  betraying  splintered  laths,  holes  that  had 
been  caused  by  a  bomb  that  had  burst  and  killed 
several  people  in  the  little  square  outside.  Such 
excitements  seem  to  be  things  of  the  past  now  in 
Udine.  Udine  keeps  itself  dark  nowadays,  and  the 
Austrian  sea-planes,  which  come  raiding  the  Italian 
coast  country  at  night  very  much  in  the  same  aim- 
less, casually  malignant  way  in  which  the  Zeppelins 
raid  England,  apparently  because  there  is  nothing 
else  for  them  to  do,  find  it  easier  to  locate  Venice. 

35 


36        ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

My  earlier  rides  in  Venetia  began  always  with  the 
level  roads  of  the  plain,  roads  frequently  edged  by 
water  courses,  with  plentiful  willows  beside  the 
road,  vines  and  fields  of  Indian  corn  and  suchlike 
lush  crops.  Always  quite  soon  one  came  to  some 
old  Austrian  boundary  posts;  almost  everywhere 
the  Italians  are  fighting  upon  what  is  technically 
enemy  territory,  but  nowhere  does  it  seem  a  whit 
less  Italian  than  the  plain  of  Lombardy.  When 
at  last  I  motored  away  from  Udine  to  the  northern 
mountain  front  I  passed  through  Campo-Formio 
and  saw  the  white-faced  inn  at  which  Napoleon  dis- 
membered the  ancient  republic  of  Venice  and  bar- 
tered away  this  essential  part  of  Italy  into  foreign 
control.  It  just  gravitates  back  now  —  as  though 
there  had  been  no  Napoleon. 

And  upon  the  roads  and  beside  them  was  the  enor- 
mous equipment  of  a  modern  army  advancing. 
Everywhere  I  saw  new  roads  being  made,  railways 
pushed  uj),  vast  store  dumps,  hospitals ;  everywhere 
the  villages  swarmed  with  grey  soldiers ;  everywhere 
our  automobile  was  threading  its  way  and  taking 
astonishing  risks  among  interminable  processions 
of  motor  lorries,  strings  of  ambulances  or  of  mule- 
carts,  waggons  with  timber,  waggons  with  wire, 
waggons  with  men's  gear,  waggons  with  casks,  wag- 
gons discreetly  veiled,  columns  of  infantry,  cavalry, 
batteries  en  route.     Every  waggon  that  goes  up  full 


THE  ISONZO  FRONT  37 

comes  back  empty,  and  many  wounded  were  coming 
down  and  prisoners  and  troops  returning  to  rest. 
Goritzia  had  been  taken  a  week  or  so  before  my  ar- 
rival ;  the  Isonzo  had  been  crossed  and  the  Austrians 
driven  back  across  the  Carso  for  several  miles;  all 
the  resources  of  Italy  seemed  to  be  crowding  up  to 
make  good  these  gains  and  gather  strength  for  the 
next  thrust.  The  roads  under  all  this  traffic  re- 
mained wonderful;  gangs  of  men  were  everywhere 
repairing  the  first  onset  of  wear,  and  Italy  is  the 
most  fortunate  land  in  the  world  for  road  metal; 
her  mountains  are  solid  road  metal,  and  in  this 
Venetian  plain  you  need  but  to  scrape  through  a 
yard  of  soil  to  find  gravel. 

One  travelled  through  a  choking  dust  under  the 
blue  sky,  and  above  the  steady  incessant  dusty  suc- 
cession of  lorry,  lorry,  lorry,  lorry  that  passed  one 
by,  one  saw,  looking  up,  the  tree  tops,  house  roofs, 
or  the  solid  Venetian  campanile  of  this  or  that  way- 
side village.  Once  as  we  were  coming  out  of  the 
great  grey  portals  of  that  beautiful  old  relic  of  a 
former  school  of  fortification,  Palmanova,  the  traffic 
became  suddenly  bright  yellow,  and  for  a  kilometre 
or  so  we  were  passing  nothing  but  Sicilian  mule- 
carts  loaded  with  hay.  These  carts  seem  as  strange 
among  the  grey  shapes  of  modern  war  transport  as  a 
Chinese  mandarin  in  painted  silk  would  be.  They 
are  the  most  individual  of  things,  all  two-wheeled. 


38        ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

all  bright  yellow  and  the  same  svze  it  is  true,  but 
upon  each  there  are  the  gayest  of  little  paintings, 
such  paintings  as  one  sees  in  England  at  times  upon 
an  ice-cream  barrow.  Sometimes  the  picture  will 
present  a  scriptural  subject,  sometimes  a  scene  of 
opera,  sometimes  a  dream  landscape  or  a  trophy  of 
fruits  or  flowers,  and  the  harness  —  now  much  out 
of  repair  —  is  studded  with  brass.  Again  and 
again  I  have  passed  strings  of  these  gay  carts;  all 
Sicily  must  be  swept  of  them. 

Through  the  dust  I  came  to  Aquileia,  which  is 
now  an  old  cathedral,  built  upon  the  remains  of  a 
very  early  basilica,  standing  in  a  space  in  a  scat- 
tered village.  But  across  this  dusty  space  there 
was  carried  the  head  of  the  upstart  Maximin  who 
murdered  Alexander  Severus,  and  later  Aquileia 
brought  Attila  near  to  despair.  Our  party 
alighted ;  we  inspected  a  very  old  mosaic  floor  which 
has  been  uncovered  since  the  Austrian  retreat.  The 
Austrian  priests  have  gone  too,  and  their  Italian 
successors  are  already  tracing  out  a  score  of  Roman 
traces  that  it  was  the  Austrian  custom  to  minimise. 
Captain  Pirelli  refreshed  my  historical  memories; 
it  was  rather  like  leaving  a  card  on  Gibbon  en  route 
for  contemporary  history. 

By  devious  routes  I  w^ent  on  to  certain  batteries 
of  big  guns  which  had  played  their  part  in  hammer- 
ing the  Austrian  left  above  Monfalcone  across  an 


/' 


THE  ISONZO  FRONT  39 

arm  of  the  Adriatic,  and  which  were  now  under  or- 
ders to  shift  and  move  up  closer.  The  battery  was 
the  most  unobtrusive  of  batteries;  its  one  desire 
seemed  to  be  to  appear  a  simple  piece  of  woodland 
in  the  eye  of  God  and  the  aeroplane.  I  went  about 
the  network  of  railways  and  paths  under  the  trees 
that  a  modern  battery  requires,  and  came  presently 
upon  a  great  gun  that  even  at  the  first  glance  seemed 
a  little  less  carefully  hidden  than  its  fellows.  Then 
I  saw  that  it  was  a  most  ingenious  dummy  made  of  a 
tree  and  logs  and  so  forth.  It  was  in  the  emplace- 
ment of  a  real  gun  that  had  been  located ;  it  had  its 
painted  sandbags  about  it  just  the  same,  and  it  felt 
itself  so  entirely  a  part  of  the  battery  that  whenever 
its  companions  fired  it  burnt  a  flash  and  kicked  up  a 
dust.  It  was  an  excellent  example  of  the  great  art 
of  Camouflage  which  this  war  has  developed. 

I  went  on  through  the  wood  to  a  shady  observa- 
tion post  high  in  a  tree,  into  which  I  clambered  with 
my  guide.  I  was  able  from  this  position  to  get  a 
very  good  idea  of  the  general  lie  of  the  Italian  east- 
ern front.  I  was  in  the  delta  of  the  Isonzo.  Di- 
rectly in  front  of  me  were  some  marshes  and  the  ex- 
treme tip  of  the  Adriatic  Sea,  at  the  head  of  which 
was  Monfalcone,  now  in  Italian  hands.  Behind 
Monfalcone  ran  the  red  ridge  of  the  Carso,  of  which 
the  Italians  had  just  captured  the  eastern  half.  Be- 
hind this  again  rose  the  mountains  to  the  east  of  the 


40         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

Isonzo  which  the  Aiistrians  still  held.  The  Isonzo 
came  towards  me  from  out  of  the  mountains,  in  a 
great  westward  curve.  Fifteen  or  sixteen  miles 
away  where  it  emerged  from  the  mountains  lay  the 
pleasant  and  prosperous  town  of  Goritzia,  and  at 
the  westward  point  of  the  great  curve  was  Sagrado 
with  its  broken  bridge.  The  battle  of  Goritzia  was 
really  not  fought  at  Goritzia  at  all.  What  hap- 
pened was  the  brilliant  and  bloody  storming  of 
Mounts  Podgora  and  Sabotino  on  the  western  side 
of  the  river  above  Goritzia,  and  simultaneously  a 
crossing  at  Sagrado  below  Goritzia  and  a  magnifi- 
cent rush  up  to  the  plateau  and  across  the  plateau 
of  the  Carso.  Goritzia  itself  was  not  organised  for 
defence,  and  the  Austrians  were  so  surprised  by  the 
rapid  storm  of  the  mountains  to  the  northwest  of  it 
and  of  the  Carso  to  the  southeast,  that  they  made 
no  fight  in  the  town  itself. 

As  a  consequence  when  I  visited  it  I  found  it  very 
little  injured  —  compared,  that  is,  with  such  other 
towns  as  have  been  fought  through.  Here  and 
there  the  front  of  a  house  has  been  knocked  in  by 
an  Austrian  shell,  or  a  lamp  post  prostrated.  But 
the  road  bridge  had  suffered  a  good  deal ;  its  iron 
parapet  was  twisted  about  by  shell  bursts  and  inter- 
woven with  young  trees  and  big  boughs  designed  to 
screen  the  passerby  from  the  observation  of  the  Aus- 
trian gunners  upon  Monte  Santo.     Here  and  there 


THE  ISONZO  FKONT  41 

were  huge  boles  through  which  one  could  look  down 
upon  the  blue  trickles  of  water  in  the  stony  river 
bed  far  below.  The  driver  of  our  automobile  dis- 
played what  seemed  to  me  an  extreme  confidence  in 
the  margins  of  these  gaps,  but  his  confidence  was 
justified.  At  Sagrado  the  bridge  had  been  much 
more  completely  demolished;  no  effort  had  been 
made  to  restore  the  horizontal  roadway,  but  one 
crossed  by  a  sort  of  timber  switchback  that  followed 
the  ups  and  downs  of  the  ruins. 

It  is  not  in  these  places  that  one  must  look  for 
the  real  destruction  of  modern  war.  The  real  fight 
on  the  left  of  Goritzia  went  through  the  village  of 
Lucinico  up  the  hill  of  Podgora.  Lucinico  is  noth- 
ing more  than  a  heap  of  grey  stones ;  except  for  a  bit 
of  the  church  wall  and  the  gable  end  of  a  house  one 
cannot  even  speak  of  it  as  ruins.  But  in  one  place 
among  the  rubble  I  saw  the  splintered  top  and  a  leg 
of  a  grand  piano.  Podgora  hill,  which  was  no 
doubt  once  neatly  terraced  and  cultivated,  is  like  a 
scrap  of  landscape  from  some  airless,  treeless 
planet.  Still  more  desolate  was  the  scene  upon  the 
Carso  to  the  right  (south)  of  Goritzia.  Both  San 
Martino  and  Doberdo  are  destroyed  beyond  the 
limits  of  ruination.  The  Carso  itself  is  a  waterless 
upland  with  but  a  few  bushy  trees ;  it  must  always 
have  been  a  desolate  region,  but  now  it  is  an  inde- 
scribable wilderness  of  shell  craters,  smashed-up 


42         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

Austrian  trenches,  splintered  timber,  old  iron,  rags 
and  that  rusty  thorny  vileness  of  man's  invention, 
worse  than  all  the  thorns  and  thickets  of  nature, 
barbed  wire.  There  are  no  dead  visible;  the 
wounded  have  been  cleared  away;  but  about  the 
trenches  and  particularly  near  some  of  the  dug-outs 
there  was  a  faint  repulsive  smell.  .  .  . 

Yet  into  this  wilderness  the  Italians  are  now 
thrusting  a  sort  of  order.  The  German  is  a  won- 
derful worker;  they  say  on  the  Anglo-French  front 
that  he  makes  trenches  by  way  of  resting,  but  I 
doubt  if  he  can  touch  the  Italian  at  certain  forms  of 
toil.  All  the  way  up  to  San  Martino  and  beyond, 
swarms  of  workmen  were  making  one  of  those  care- 
fully graded  roads  that  the  Italians  make  better 
than  any  other  people.  Other  swarms  were  laying 
waterpipes.  For  upon  the  Carso  there  are  neither 
roads  nor  water,  and  before  the  Italians  can  thrust 
further  both  must  be  brought  up  to  the  front. 

As  we  approached  San  Martino  an  Austrian  aero- 
plane made  its  presence  felt  overhead  by  dropping  a 
bomb  among  the  tents  of  some  workmen,  in  a  little 
scrubby  wood  on  the  hillside  near  at  hand.  One 
heard  the  report  and  turned  to  see  the  fragments 
flying  and  the  dust.  Probably  they  got  some  one. 
And  then,  after  a  little  pause,  the  encampment  be- 
gan to  spew  out  men;  here,  there  and  everywhere 
they  appeared  among  the  tents,  running  like  rabbits 


THE  ISONZO  FRONT  43 

at  evening-time,  down  the  hill.  Very  soon  after  and 
probably  in  connection  with  this  signal  Austrian 
shells  began  to  come  over.  They  do  not  use  shrap- 
nel because  the  rocky  soil  of  Italy  makes  that  un- 
necessary. They  fire  a  sort  of  shell  that  goes  bang 
and  releases  a  cloud  of  smoke  overhead,  and  then 
drops  a  parcel  of  high  explosive  that  bursts  on  the 
ground.  The  ground  leaps  into  red  dust  and  smoke. 
But  these  things  are  now  to  be  seen  on  the  cinema. 
Forthwith  the  men  working  on  the  road  about  us 
begin  to  down  tools  and  make  for  the  shelter 
trenches,  a  long  procession  going  at  a  steady  but 
resolute  walk.  Then  like  a  blow  in  the  chest  came 
the  bang  of  a  big  Italian  gun  somewhere  close  at 
hand.  .  .  . 

Along  about  four  thousand  miles  of  the  various 
fronts  this  sort  of  thing  was  going  on  that  morn- 
ing. .  .  . 

§  2 

This  Carso  front  is  the  practicable  offensive  front 
of  Italy.  From  the  left  wing  on  the  Isonzo  along 
the  Alpine  boundary  round  to  the  Swiss  boundary 
there  is  mountain  warfare  like  nothing  else  in  the 
world,  it  is  warfare  that  pushes  the  boundary  back- 
ward, but  it  is  mountain  warfare  that  will  not,  for 
so  long  a  period  that  the  war  will  be  over  first,  hold 
out  any  hopeful  prospects  of  offensive  movements  on 


44        ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 


a  large  scale  against  Austria  or  Germany.  It  is  a 
short  distance,  as  tlie  crow  flies,  from  Rovereto  to 
Munich,  but  not  as  the  big  gun  travels.  The  Ital- 
ians, therefore,  as  their  contribution  to  the  common 
effort,  are  thrusting  rather  eastwardly  towards  the 
line  of  the  Julian  Alps  through  Carinthia  and  Car- 
niola.  From  my  observation  post  in  the  tree  near 
Monfalcone  I  saw  Trieste  away  along  the  coast  to 
my  right.  It  looked  scarcely  as  distant  as  Folke- 
stone from  Dungeness.  The  Italian  advanced  line 
is  indeed  scarcely  ten  miles  from  Trieste.  But  the 
Italians  are  not,  I  think,  going  to  Trieste  just  yet. 
That  is  not  the  real  game  now.  They  are  playing 
loyally  with  the  Allies  for  the  complete  defeat  of  the 
Central  Powers,  and  that  is  to  be  achieved  striking 
home  into  Austria.  Meanwhile  there  is  no  sense  in 
knocking  Trieste  to  pieces,  or  using  Italians  instead 
of  Austrian  soldiers  to  garrison  it. 


II 

THE  MOUNTAIN  WAR 


The  mountain  warfare  of  Italy  is  extraordinarily 
unlike  that  upon  any  other  front.  From  the  Isonzo 
to  the  Swiss  frontier  we  are  dealing  with  high  moun- 
tains, cut  by  deep  valleys  between  which  there  is 
usually  no  practicable  lateral  communications. 
Each  advance  must  have  the  nature  of  an  unsup- 
ported shove  along  a  narrow  channel,  until  the 
whole  mountain  system,  that  is,  is  won,  and  the  at- 
tack can  begin  to  deploy  in  front  of  the  passes. 
Geographically  Austria  has  the  advantage.  She 
had  the  gentler  slope  of  the  mountain  chains  while 
Italy  has  the  steep  side,  and  the  foresight  of  old 
treaties  has  given  her  deep  bites  into  what  is  nat- 
urally Italian  territory ;  she  is  far  nearer  the  Italian 
plain  than  Italy  is  near  any  practicable  fighting 
ground  for  large  forces ;  particularly  is  this  the  case 
in  the  region  of  the  Adige  valley  and  Lake  Garda. 

The  legitimate  war,  so  to  speak,  in  this  region  is  a 
mountaineering  war.  The  typical  position  is 
roughly  as  follows.     The  Austrians  occupy  valley 

45 


46        ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

A  which  opens  northward ;  the  Italians  occupy  val- 
ley B  which  opens  southward.  The  fight  is  for  the 
crest  between  A  and  B.  The  side  that  wins  that 
crest  gains  the  power  of  looking  down  into,  firing 
into  and  outflanking  the  positions  in  the  enemy 
valley.  In  most  cases  it  is  the  Italians  now  who 
are  pressing,  and  if  the  reader  will  examine  a  map 
of  the  front  and  compare  it  with  the  oflftcial  reports 
he  will  soon  realise  that  almost  everywhere  the 
Italians  are  up  to  the  head  of  the  southward  val- 
leys and  working  over  the  crests  so  as  to  press  down 
upon  the  Austrian  valleys.  But  in  the  Trentino 
the  Austrians  are  still  well  over  the  crest  on  the 
southward  slopes.  When  I  was  in  Italy  they  still 
held  Rovereto. 

Now  it  cannot  be  said  that  under  modern  condi- 
tions mountains  favour  either  the  offensive  or  the 
defensive.  But  they  certainly  make  operations  far 
more  deliberate  than  upon  a  level.  An  engineered 
road  or  railway  in  an  Alpine  valley  is  the  most 
vulnerable  of  things;  its  curves  and  viaducts  may 
be  practically  demolished  by  shell  fire  or  swept  by 
shrapnel,  although  you  hold  the  entire  valley  ex- 
cept for  one  vantage  point.  All  the  mountains 
round  about  a  valley  must  be  won  before  that  val- 
ley is  safe  for  the  transport  of  an  advance.  But 
on  the  other  hand  a  surprise  capture  of  some  single 
mountain  crest  and  the  hoisting  of  one  gun  into 


THE  MOUNTAIN  WAR  47 

position  there  may  block  the  retreat  of  guns  and 
material  from  a  great  series  of  positions.  Moun- 
tain surfaces  are  extraordinarily  various  and  subtle. 
You  may  understand  Picardy  upon  a  map,  but 
mountain  warfare  is  three-dimensional.  A  strug- 
gle may  go  on  for  weeks  or  months  consisting  of  ap- 
parently separate  and  incidental  skirmishes,  and 
then  suddenly  a  whole  valley  organisation  may 
crumble  away  in  retreat  or  disaster.  Italy  is  gnaw- 
ing into  the  Trentino  day  by  day,  and  particularly 
round  by  her  right  mng.  At  no  time  shall  I  be 
surprised  to  see  a  sudden  lunge  forward  on  that 
front,  and  hear  of  a  tale  of  guns  and  prisoners. 
This  will  not  mean  that  she  has  made  a  sudden  at- 
tack, but  that  some  system  of  Austrian  positions 
has  collapsed  under  her  continual  pressure. 

Such  briefly  is  the  idea  of  the  mountain  struggle. 
Its  realities,  I  should  imagine,  are  among  the 
strangest  and  most  picturesque  in  all  this  tremen- 
dous world  conflict.  I  know  nothing  of  the  war 
in  the  east,  of  course,  but  there  are  things  here  that 
must  be  hard  to  beat.  Happily  they  will  soon  get 
justice  done  to  them  by  an  abler  pen  than  mine.  I 
hear  that  Kipling  is  to  follow  me  upon  this  round ; 
nothing  can  be  imagined  more  congenial  to  his  ex- 
traordinary power  of  vivid  rendering  than  this 
struggle  against  cliffs,  avalanches,  frost  and  the 
Austrian. 


48        ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

To  go  the  Italian  round  needs,  among  other 
things,  a  good  head.  Everywhere  it  has  been  neces- 
sary to  make  roads  where  hitherto  there  have  been 
only  mule  tracks  or  no  tracks  at  all ;  the  roads  are 
often  still  in  the  making,  and  the  automobile  of  the 
war  tourist  skirts  precipices  and  takes  hairpin 
bends  upon  tracks  of  loose  metal  not  an  inch  too 
broad  for  the  operation,  or  it  floats  for  a  moment 
over  the  dizzy  edge  while  a  train  of  mule  transport 
blunders  by.  The  unruly  imagination  of  man's 
heart  (which  is  "  only  evil  continually  ")  speculates 
upon  what  would  be  the  consequences  of  one  good 
bump  from  the  wheel  of  a  mule-cart.  Down  below, 
the  trees  that  one  sees  through  a  wisp  of  cloud  look 
far  too  small  and  spiky  and  scattered  to  hold  out 
much  hope  for  a  fallen  man  of  letters.  And  at  the 
high  positions  they  are  too  used  to  the  vertical  life 
to  understand  the  secret  feelings  of  the  visitor  from 
the  horizontal.  General  Bompiani,  whose  writings 
are  well  known  to  all  English  students  of  military 
matters,  showed  me  the  Gibraltar  he  is  making  of  a 
great  mountain  system  east  of  the  Adige. 

"Let  me  show  you,"  he  said,  and  flung  himself 
on  to  the  edge  of  the  precipice  into  exactly  the  po- 
sition of  a  lady  riding  side-saddle.  "  You  will  find 
it  more  comfortable  to  sit  down." 

But  anxious  as  I  am  abroad  not  to  discredit  my 
country  by  unseemly  exhibitions  I  felt  unequal  to 


THE  MOUNTAIN  WAR  49 

such  gymnastics  without  a  proper  rehearsal  at  a 
lower  level.  I  seated  myself  carefully  a  yard  (per- 
haps it  was  a  couple  of  yards)  from  the  edge,  ad- 
vanced on  my  trousers  without  dignity  to  the  verge, 
and  so  with  an  effort  thrust  my  legs  over  to  dangle 
in  the  crystalline  air. 

"  That/'  proceeded  General  Bompiani,  pointing 
with  a  giddy  flourish  of  his  riding  whip,  "  is  Monte 
Tomba." 

I  swayed  and  half  extended  my  hand  towards 
him.  But  he  was  still  there  —  sitting,  so  to  speak, 
on  the  half  of  himself.  ...  I  was  astonished  that 
he  did  not  disappear  abruptly  during  his  exposi- 
tion. ... 

§  2 

The  fighting  in  the  Dolomites  has  been  perhaps 
the  most  wonderful  of  all  these  separate  mountain 
campaigns.  I  went  up  by  automobile  as  far  as  the 
clambering  new  road  goes  up  the  flanks  of  Tofana 
No.  2;  thence  for  a  time  by  mule  along  the  flank 
of  Tofana  No.  1,  and  thence  on  foot  to  the  vestiges 
of  the  famous  Castelletto. 

The  aspect  of  these  mountains  is  particularly 
grim  and  wicked;  they  are  worn  old  mountains, 
they  tower  overhead  in  enormous  vertical  cliffs  of 
sallow  grey,  with  the  square  jointings  and  occa- 
sional clefts  and  gullies,  their  summits  are  toothed 


50         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

and  jagged ;  the  path  ascends  and  passes  round  the 
side  of  the  mountain  upon  loose  screes,  which  de- 
scend steeply  to  a  lower  wall  of  precipices.  In  the 
distance  rise  other  harsh  and  desolate  looking 
mountain  masses,  with  shining  occasional  scars  of 
old  snow.  Far  below  is  a  bleak  valley  of  stunted 
pine  trees  through  which  passes  the  road  of  the 
Dolomites. 

As  I  ascended  the  upper  track  two  bandaged  men 
were  coming  down  on  led  mules.  It  was  mid 
August,  and  they  were  suffering  from  frost  bite. 
Across  the  great  gap  between  the  summits  a  minute 
traveller  with  some  provisions  was  going  up  by  wire 
to  some  post  upon  the  crest.  For  everywhere  upon 
the  icy  pinnacles  are  observation  posts  directing  the 
fire  of  the  big  guns  on  the  slopes  below,  or  ma- 
chine-gun stations,  or  little  garrisons  that  sit  and 
wait  through  the  bleak  days.  Often  they  have  no 
link  with  the  world  below  but  a  precipitous  climb 
or  a  "  teleferic  "  wire.  Snow  and  frost  may  cut 
them  off  absolutely  for  weeks  from  the  rest  of  man- 
kind. The  sick  and  wounded  must  begin  their  jour- 
ney down  to  help  and  comfort  in  a  giddy  basket  that 
swings  down  to  the  head  of  the  mule  track  below. 

Originally  all  these  crests  were  in  Austrian 
hands;  they  were  stormed  by  the  Alpini  under  al- 
most incredible  conditions.  For  fifteen  days,  for 
example,  they  fought  their  way  up  these  screes  on 


THE  MOUNTAIN  WAR  51 

the  flanks  of  Tofana  No.  2  to  the  ultimate  crags, 
making  perhaps  a  hundred  metres  of  ascent  each 
day,  hiding  under  rocks  and  in  holes  in  the  day- 
light and  receiving  fresh  provisions  and  ammuni- 
tion and  advancing  by  night.  They  were  subjected 
to  rifle  fire,  machine-gun  fire  and  bombs  of  a  pecu- 
liar sort,  big  iron  balls  of  the  size  of  a  football  filled 
with  explosive  that  were  just  flung  down  the  steep. 
They  dodged  flares  and  star  shells.  At  one  place 
they  went  up  a  chimney  that  would  be  far  beyond 
the  climbing  powers  of  any  but  a  very  active  man. 
It  must  have  been  like  storming  the  skies.  The 
dead  and  wounded  rolled  away  often  into  inaccessi- 
ble ravines.  Stray  skeletons,  rags  of  uniform,  frag- 
ments of  weapons,  will  add  to  the  climbing  interest 
of  these  gaunt  masses  for  many  years  to  come.  In 
this  manner  it  was  that  Tofana  No.  2  was  taken. 

Now  the  Italians  are  organising  this  prize,  and  I 
saw  winding  up  far  above  me  on  the  steep  grey 
slope  a  multitudinous  string  of  little  things  that 
looked  like  black  ants,  each  carrying  a  small  bright 
yellow  egg.  They  were  mules  bearing  bulks  of  tim- 
ber. .  .  . 

But  one  position  held  out  invincibly ;  this  was  the 
Castelletto,  a  great  natural  fortress  of  rock  stand- 
ing out  at  an  angle  of  the  mountain  in  such  a  posi- 
tion that  it  commanded  the  Italian  communications 
(the  Dolomite  road)  in  the  valley  below,  and  ren- 


52         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

dered  all  their  positions  uncomfortable  and  inse- 
cure. This  obnoxious  post  was  practically  inac- 
cessible either  from  above  or  below,  and  it  barred 
the  Italians  even  from  looking  into  the  Val  Trave- 
nanzes  which  it  defended.  It  was,  in  fact,  an  im- 
pregnable position.  It  was  an  impregnable  posi- 
tion, and  against  it  was  pitted  the  invincible  fifth 
group  of  the  Alpini.  It  was  the  old  problem  of  the 
irresistible  force  in  conflict  with  the  immovable 
post.  And  the  outcome  has  been  the  biggest  mili- 
tary mine  in  all  history. 

The  business  began  in  January,  1916,  with  sur- 
veys of  the  rock  in  question.  The  work  of  survey- 
ing for  excavations,  never  a  very  simple  one,  be- 
comes much  more  difficult  when  the  site  is  occupied 
by  hostile  persons  with  machine  guns.  In  March, 
as  the  winter's  snows  abated,  the  boring  machinery 
began  to  arrive,  by  mule  as  far  as  possible  and  then 
by  hand.  Altogether  about  half  a  kilometre  of  gal- 
lery had  to  be  made  to  the  mine  chamber,  and  mean- 
while the  gelatine  was  coming  up  load  by  load  and 
resting  first  here,  then  there,  in  discreetly  chosen 
positions.  There  were  at  the  last  thirty-five  tons 
of  it  in  the  inner  chamber.  And  while  the  boring 
machines  bored  and  the  work  went  on.  Lieutenant 
Malvezzi  was  carefully  working  out  the  problem  of 
*'  11  massimo  eff etto  dirompente  "  and  deciding  ex- 
actly how  to  pack  and  explode  his  little  hoard.     On 


THE  MOUNTAIN  WAR  53 

the  eleventh  of  July,  at  3.30,  as  he  rejoices  to  state 
in  his  official  report,  "  the  mine  responded  per- 
fectly both  in  respect  of  the  calculations  made  and 
of  the  practical  effects,"  that  is  to  say,  the  Aus- 
trians  were  largely  missing  and  the  Italians  were 
in  possession  of  the  crater  of  the  Castelletto  and 
looking  down  the  Val  Travenanzes  from  which  they 
had  been  barred  for  so  long.  Within  a  month 
things  had  been  so  tidied  up,  and  secured  by  fur- 
ther excavations  and  sandbags  against  hostile  fire, 
that  even  a  middle-aged  English  writer,  extremely 
fagged  and  hot  and  breathless,  could  enjoy  the 
same  privilege.  All  this,  you.  must  understand, 
had  gone  on  at  a  level  to  which  the  ordinary  tourist 
rarely  climbs,  in  a  rarefied,  chest-tightening  atmos- 
phere, with  wisps  of  cloud  floating  in  the  clear  air 
below  and  club-huts  close  at  hand.  .  .  . 

Among  these  mountains  avalanches  are  fre- 
quent; and  they  come  dow^n  regardless  of  human 
strategy.  In  many  cases  the  trenches  cross  ava- 
lanche tracks;  they  and  the  men  in  them  are  peri- 
odically swept  away  and  periodically  replaced. 
They  are  positions  that  must  be  held ;  if  the  Italians 
will  not  face  such  sacrifices,  the  Austrians  will. 
Avalanches  and  frost  bite  have  slain  and  disabled 
their  thousands;  they  have  accounted  perhaps  for 
as  many  Italians  in  this  austere  and  giddy  cam- 
paign as  the  Austrians.  .  .  . 


54        ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

§  3 

It  seems  to  be  part  of  the  stern  resolve  of  Fate 
that  this,  the  greatest  of  wars,  shall  be  the  least 
glorious ;  it  is  manifestly  being  decided  not  by  vic- 
tories but  by  blunders.  It  is  indeed  a  history  of 
colossal  stupidities.  Among  the  most  decisive  of 
these  blunders,  second  only  jjerhaps  to  the  blunder 
of  the  Verdun  attack  and  far  outshining  the  wild 
raid  of  the  British  towards  Bagdad,  was  the  blun- 
der of  the  Trentino  offensive.  It  does  not  need 
the  equipment  of  a  military  expert,  it  demands 
only  quite  ordinary  knowledge  and  average  intelli- 
gence, to  realise  the  folly  of  that  Austrian  adven- 
ture. There  is  some  justification  for  a  claim  that 
the  decisive  battle  of  the  war  was  fought  upon  the 
soil  of  Italy.  There  is  still  more  justification  for 
saying  that  it  might  have  been. 

There  was  only  one  good  point  about  the  Aus- 
trian thrust.  No  one  could  have  foretold  it.  And 
it  did  so  completely  surprise  the  Italians  as  to 
catch  them  without  any  prepared  line  of  positions 
in  their  rear.  On  the  very  eve  of  the  big  Russian 
offensive,  the  Austrians  thrust  eighteen  divisions 
hard  at  the  Trentino  frontier.  The  Italian  posts 
were  then  in  Austrian  territory;  they  held  on  the 
left  wing  and  the  right,  but  they  were  driven  in  by 
sheer  weight  of  men  and  guns  in  the  centre,  they 


THE  MOUNTAIN  WAR  55 

lost  guns  and  prisoners  because  of  that  difficulty  of 
mountain  retreats  to  which  I  have  alluded,  and  the 
Austrians  pouring  through  reached  not  indeed  the 
plain  of  Venetia,  but  to  the  upland  valleys  immedi- 
ately above  it,  to  Asiago  and  Arsiero.  They  prob- 
ably saw  the  Venetian  plain  through  gaps  in  the 
hills,  but  they  were  still  separated  from  it  even  at 
Arsiero  by  what  are  mountains  to  an  English  eye, 
mountains  as  high  as  Snowdon.  But  the  Italians 
of  such  beautiful  old  places  as  Vicenza,  Marostica 
and  Bassano  could  watch  the  Austrian  shells  burst- 
ing on  the  last  line  of  hills  above  the  plain,  and  I 
have  no  doubt  they  felt  extremely  uneasy. 

As  one  motors  through  these  ripe  and  beautiful 
towns  and  through  the  rich  valleys  that  link  them 
—  it  is  a  smiling  land  abounding  in  old  castles  and 
villas,  Vicenza  is  a  rich  museum  of  Palladio's  archi- 
tecture and  Bassano  is  full  of  irreplaceable  painted 
buildings  —  one  feels  that  the  thing  was  a  narrow 
escape,  but  from  the  military  point  of  view  it  was 
merely  an  insane  escapade.  The  Austrians  had 
behind  them  —  and  some  way  behind  them  —  one 
little  strangulated  railway  and  no  good  pass  road ; 
their  right  was  held  at  Pasubio,  their  left  was  simi- 
larly bent  back.  In  front  of  them  was  between 
twice  and  three  times  their  number  of  first  class 
troops,  with  an  unlimited  equipment.  If  they  had 
surmounted  that  last  mountain  crest  they  would 


56        ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

have  come  down  to  almost  certain  destruction  in 
the  plain.  They  could  never  have  got  back.  For 
a  time  it  is  said  that  General  Cadorna  considered 
that  possibility.  From  the  point  of  view  of  purely 
military  considerations,  the  Trentino  offensive 
should  perhaps  have  ended  in  the  capitulation  of 
Vicenza. 

I  ^411  confess  I  am  glad  it  did  not  do  so.  This 
tour  of  the  fronts  has  made  me  very  sad  and  weary 
with  a  succession  of  ruins.  I  can  bear  to  see  no 
more  ruins  unless  they  are  the  ruins  of  Dussel- 
dorf,  Cologne,  Berlin,  or  such-like  modern  German 
city.  Anxious  as  I  am  to  be  a  systematic  Philis- 
tine, to  express  my  preference  for  Marinetti  over 
the  Florentine  British  and  generally  to  antagonise 
{esthetic  prigs,  I  rejoiced  over  that  sunlit  land  as 
one  might  rejoice  over  a  child  saved  from  beasts. 

On  the  hills  beyond  Schio  I  walked  out  through 
the  embrasure  of  a  big  gun  in  a  rock  gallery,  and 
saw  the  highest  points  upon  the  hillside  to  which 
the  Austrian  infantry  clambered  in  their  futile  last 
attacks.     Below  me  were  the  ruins  of  Arsiero  and 
Velo  d'Astico  recovered,  and  across  the  broad  val- 
ley rose  Monte  Cimone  with  the  Italian  trenches 
upon  its  crest  and  the  Austrians  a  little  below  to  ; 
the  north.     A  very  considerable  bombardment  was  ' 
going  on  and  it  reverberated  finely.     (It  is  only  | 
among  mountains  that  one  hears  anything  that  one 


THE  MOUNTAIN  WAR  57 

can  call  the  thunder  of  guns.  The  heaviest  bom- 
bardments I  heard  In  France  sounded  merely  like 
Brock's  benefit  on  a  much  louder  scale,  and  disap- 
pointed me  extremely.)  As  I  sat  and  listened  to 
this  uproar  and  watched  the  shells  burst  on  Cimone 
and  far  away  up  the  valley  over  Castelletto  above 
Pedescala,  Captain  Pirelli  pointed  out  the  position 
of  the  Austrian  frontier.  I  doubt  if  English  peo- 
ple realise  that  the  utmost  depth  to  which  this 
great  Trentino  offensive,  which  exhausted  Austria, 
wasted  the  flower  of  the  Hungarian  army  and  led 
directly  to  the  Galician  disasters  and  the  interven- 
tion of  Rumania,  penetrated  into  Italian  territory 
was  about  six  miles. 


Ill 

BEHIND  THE  FRONT 

§  1 

I  HAVE  a  peculiar  affection  for  Verona  and  cer- 
tain things  in  Verona.  Italians  must  forgive  us 
English  this  little  streak  of  impertinent  proprie- 
torship in  the  beautiful  things  of  their  abundant 
land.  It  is  quite  open  to  them  to  revenge  them- 
selves by  professing  a  tenderness  for  Liverpool  or 
Leeds.  It  was,  for  instance,  with  a  peculiar  and 
personal  indignation  that  I  saw  where  an  Austrian 
air  bomb  had  killed  five-and-thirty  people  in  the 
Piazza  Erbe.  Somehow  in  that  jolly  old  place,  a 
place  that  has  very  much  of  the  quality  of  a  very 
pretty  and  cheerful  little  old  woman,  it  seemed  ex- 
ceptionally an  outrage.  And  I  made  a  special  pil- 
grimage to  see  how  it  was  with  that  monument  of 
Can  Grande,  the  equestrian  Scaliger  with  the  side- 
long grin,  for  whom  I  confess  a  ridiculous  admira- 
tion. Can  Grande,  I  rejoice  to  say,  has  retired  into 
a  case  of  brickwork,  surmounted  by  a  steep  roof  of 
thick  iron  plates ;  no  aeroplane  exists  to  carry  bomb 

i  '  58 


BEHIND  THE  FRONT  59 

enough  to  smash  that  covering ;  there  he  will  smile 
securely  in  the  darkness  until  peace  comes  again. 
All  over  Venetia  the  Austrian  seaplanes  are 
making  the  same  sort  of  idiot  raid  on  lighted  places 
that  the  Zeppelins  have  been  making  over  England. 
These  raids  do  no  effective  military  work.  What 
conceivable  military  advantage  can  there  be  in 
dropping  bombs  into  a  marketing  crowd?  It  is  a 
sort  of  anti-Teutonic  propaganda  by  the  Central 
Powers  to  which  they  seem  to  have  been  incited  by 
their  own  evil  genius.  It  is  as  if  they  could  con- 
vince us  that  there  is  an  essential  malignity  in  Ger- 
mans, that  until  the  German  powers  are  stamped 
down  into  the  mud  they  will  continue  to  do  evil 
things.  All  the  Allies  have  borne  the  thrusting 
and  boasting  of  Germany  with  exemplary  patience 
for  half  a  century;  England  gave  her  Heligoland 
and  stood  out  of  the  way  of  her  colonial  expansion, 
Italy  was  a  happy  hunting  ground  for  her  business 
enterprise,  France  had  come  near  resignation  on 
the  score  of  Alsace-Lorraine.  And  then  over  and 
above  the  great  outrage  of  the  war  come  these  in- 
cessant mean-spirited  atrocities.  A  great  and  sim- 
ple wickedness  it  is  possible  to  forgive;  the  war 
itself,  had  it  been  fought  greatly  by  Austria  and 
Germany,  would  have  made  no  such  deep  and  en- 
during breach  as  these  silly,  futile  assuSfSi*  nations 
have  done  between  the  Austro-Germans  and  the 


GO         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

rest  of  the  civilised  world.  One  great  misdeed  is 
a  thing  understandable  and  forgivable ;  what  grows 
upon  the  consciousness  of  the  world  is  the  per- 
suasion that  here  we  fight  not  a  national  sin  but  a 
national  insanity;  that  we  dare  not  leave  the  Ger- 
man the  power  to  attack  other  nations  any  more 
for  ever.  .  .  . 

Venice  has  suffered  particularly  from  this  ape- 
like impulse  to  hurt  and  terrorise  enemy  non-com- 
batants. Venice  has  indeed  suffered  from  this  war 
far  more  than  any  other  town  in  Italy.  Her  trade 
has  largely  ceased ;  she  has  no  visitors.  I  woke  up 
on  my  way  to  Udine  and  found  my  train  at  Venice 
with  an  hour  to  spare;  after  much  examining  and 
stamping  of  my  passport  I  was  allowed  outside  the 
station  wicket  to  get  coffee  in  the  refreshment  room 
and  a  glimpse  of  a  very  sad  and  silent  Grand  Canal. 
There  was  nothing  doing;  a  black  despondent  rem- 
nant of  the  old  crowd  of  gondolas  browsed  dreamily 
against  the  quay.  There  was  no  competition  for  a 
potential  passenger;  a  small  boy  walked  down  the 
quay  to  stare  at  me  the  better.  The  empty  palaces 
seemed  to  be  sleeping  in  the  morning  sunshine  be- 
cause it  was  not  worth  while  to  wake  up.  .  .  . 

§  2 

Except  in  the  case  of  Venice,  the  war  does  not 
seem  as  yet  to  have  made  nearly  such  a  mark  upon 


BEHIND  THE  FEONT  61 

life  in  Italy  as  it  has  in  England  or  provincial 
France.  People  speak  of  Italy  as  a  poor  country, 
but  that  is  from  a  banker's  point  of  view.  In  some 
respects  she  is  the  richest  country  on  earth,  and  in 
the  matter  of  staying  power  I  should  think  she  is 
better  off  than  any  other  belligerent.  She  pro- 
duces food  in  abundance  everywhere;  her  women 
are  agricultural  workers,  so  that  the  interruption 
of  food  production  by  the  war  has  been  less  serious 
in  Italy  than  in  any  other  part  of  Europe.  In 
peace  time,  she  has  constantly  exported  labour ;  the 
Italian  worker  has  been  a  seasonal  emigrant  to 
America,  north  and  south,  to  Switzerland,  Ger- 
many and  the  south  of  France.  The  cessation  of 
this  emigration  has  given  her  great  reserves  of  man 
power,  so  that  she  has  carried  on  her  admirable 
campaign  with  less  interference  with  her  normal 
economic  life  than  any  other  power.  The  first  per- 
son I  spoke  to  upon  the  platform  at  Modane  was  a 
British  officer  engaged  in  forwarding  Italian  pota- 
toes to  the  British  front  in  France.  Afterwards  on 
my  return,  when  a  little  passport  irregularity  kept 
me  for  half  a  day  in  Modane,  I  went  for  a  walk  with 
him  along  the  winding  pass  road  that  goes  down 
into  France.  "  You  see  hundreds  and  hundreds  of 
new  Fiat  cars,"  he  remarked,  "  along  here  —  going 
up  to  the  French  front." 

But  there  is  a  return  trade.     Near  Paris  I  saw 


62         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 


scores  of  thousands  of  shells  piled  high  to  go  to 
Italy. 

I  doubt  if  English  people  fully  realise  either  the 
economic  sturdiness  or  the  political  courage  of 
their  Italian  ally.  Italy  is  not  merely  fighting  a 
first-class  war  in  first-class  fashion  but  she  is  doing 
a  big,  dangerous,  generous  and  far-sighted  thing  in 
fighting  at  all.  France  and  England  were  obliged 
to  fight;  the  necessity  w^as  as  plain  as  daylight. 
The  participation  of  Italy  demanded  a  remoter  wis- 
dom. In  the  long  run  she  would  have  been  swal- 
lowed up  economically  and  politically  by  the  Ger- 
man if  she  had  not  fought ;  but  that  was  not  a  thing 
staring  her  plainly  in  the  face  as  the  danger,  insult 
and  challenge  stared  France  and  England  in  the 
face.  What  did  stare  her  in  the  face  was  not 
merely  a  considerable  military  and  political  risk, 
but  the  rupture  of  very  close  financial  and  com- 
mercial ties.  I  found  thoughtful  men  talking 
everywhere  I  have  been  in  Italy  of  two  things,  of 
the  Jugo-Slav  riddle  and  of  the  question  of  post 
war  finance.  So  far  as  the  former  matter  goes  I 
think  the  Italians  are  set  upon  the  righteous  solu- 
tion of  all  such  riddles,  they  are  possessed  by  an 
intelligent  generosity.  They  are  clearly  set  upon 
deserving  Jugo-Slav  friendship;  they  understand 
the  plain  necessity  of  open  and  friendly  routes  to- 
wards Roumania.     It  was  an  Italian  who  set  out 


BEHIND  THE  FRONT  63 

to  explain  to  me  that  Fiume  must  be  at  least  a  free 
port ;  it  would  be  wrong  and  foolish  to  cut  the  trade 
of  Hungary  off  from  the  Mediterranean.  But  the 
banking  puzzle  is  a  more  intricate  and  puzzling 
matter  altogether  than  the  possibility  of  trouble 
between  Italian  and  Jugo-Slav. 

I  write  of  these  things  with  the  simplicity  of  an 
angel,  but  without  an  angelic  detachment.  Here 
are  questions  into  which  one  does  not  so  much  rush 
as  get  reluctantly  pushed.  Currency  and  banking 
are  dry  distasteful  questions,  but  it  is  clear  that 
they  are  too  much  in  the  hands  of  mystery-mongers ; 
It  is  as  much  the  duty  of  any  one  who  talks  and 
writes  of  affairs,  it  is  as  much  the  duty  of  every 
sane  adult,  to  bring  his  possibly  poor  and  unsuit- 
able wits  to  bear  upon  these  things,  as  it  is  for  him 
to  vote  or  enlist  or  pay  his  taxes.  Behind  the  sim- 
ple ostensible  spectacle  of  Italy  recovering  the  un- 
redeemed Italy  of  the  Trentino  and  East  Venetia, 
goes  on  another  drama.  Has  Italy  been  sinking 
into  something  rather  hard  to  define  called  "eco- 
nomic slavery"?  Is  she  or  is  she  not  escaping 
from  that  magical  servitude?  Before  this  ques- 
tion has  been  under  discussion  for  a  minute  comes 
a  name  —  for  a  time  I  was  really  quite  unable  to 
decide  whether  it  is  the  name  of  the  villain  in  the 
piece  or  of  the  maligned  heroine,  or  a  secret  so- 
ciety or  a  gold  mine,  or  a  pestilence  or  a  delusion 


64        ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

—  the  name  of  the  Banca  Commerciale  Italiana. 
Banking  in  a  country  undergoing  so  rapid  and 
vigorous  an  economic  development  as  Italy  is  very 
different  from  the  banking  we  simple  English  peo- 
ple know  of  at  home.  Banking  in  England,  like 
land-owning,  has  hitherto  been  a  sort  of  hold  up. 
There  were  always  borrowers,  there  were  always 
tenants,  and  all  that  had  to  be  done  was  to  refuse, 
obstruct.^  delay  and  worry  the  helj)less  borrower  or 
would-be  tenant  until  the  maximum  of  security 
and  profit  was  obtained.  I  have  never  borrowed 
but  I  have  built,  and  I  know  something  of  the  ex- 
treme hauteur  of  property  in  England  towards  a 
man  who  wants  to  do  anything  with  land,  and  with 
money  I  gather  the  case  is  just  the  same.  But  in 
Italy,  which  already  possessed  a  sunny  prosperity 
of  its  own  upon  mediaeval  lines,  the  banker  has  had 
to  be  suggestive  and  persuasive,  sympathetic  and 
helpful.  These  are  unaccustomed  attitudes  for 
British  capital.  The  field  has  been  far  more  at- 
tractive to  the  German  banker,  w^ho  is*  less  of  a 
proudly  impassive  usurer  and  more  of  a  partner, 
who  demands  less  than  absolute  security  because  he 
investigates  more  industriously  and  intelligently. 
This  great  bank,  the  Banca  Commerciale  Italiana, 
is  a  bank  of  the  German  type :  to  begin  with,  it  was 
certainly  dominated  by  German  directors;  it  was 
a  bank  of  stimulation,  and  its  activities  interweave 


BEHIND  THE  FKONT  65 

now  into  the  whole  fabric  of  Italian  commercial 
life.  But  it  has  already  liberated  itself  from  Ger- 
man influence,  and  the  bulk  of  its  capital  is  Italian. 
Nevertheless  I  found  discussion  ranging  about 
firstly  what  the  Banca  Commerciale  essentially 
tvaSj  secondly  what  it  might  become^  thirdly  what 
it  might  do,  and  fourthly  what,  if  anything,  had  to 
be  done  to  it. 

It  is  a  novelty  to  an  English  mind  to  find  bank- 
ing thus  mixed  up  with  politics,  but  it  is  not  a  nov- 
elty in  Italy.  All  over  Venetia  there  are  agricul- 
tural banks  which  are  said  to  be  "clerical."  I 
grappled  with  this  mystery.  "  How  are  they  cleri- 
cal?" I  asked  Captain  Pirelli.  "Do  they  lend 
money  on  bad  security  to  clerical  voters,  and  on  no 
terms  whatever  to  anti-clericals?  "  He  was  quite 
of  my  way  of  thinking.  '^  Pecunia  non  olet"  he 
said ;  "  I  have  never  yet  smelt  a  clerical  fifty  lira 
note."  .  .  .  But  on  the  other  hand  Italy  is  very 
close  to  Germany;  she  wants  easy  money  for  de- 
velopment, cheap  coal,  a  market  for  various  prod- 
ucts. The  case  against  the  Germans,  this  case  in 
which  the  Banca  Commerciale  Italiana  appears,  I 
am  convinced,  unjustly  as  a  suspect,  is  that  they 
have  turned  this  natural  and  proper  interchange 
with  Italy  into  the  acquisition  of  German  power. 
That  they  have  not  been  merely  easy  traders,  but 
patriotic  agents.     It  is  alleged  that  they  used  their 


66         ITALY,  FEANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

early  "  pull "  in  Italian  banking  to  favour  German 
enterprises  and  German  political  influence  against 
the  development  of  native  Italian  business;  that 
their  merchants  are  not  bona-fide  individuals  but 
members  of  a  nationalist  conspiracy  to  gain  eco- 
nomic controls.  The  German  is  a  patriotic  mono- 
maniac. He  is  not  a  man  but  a  limb,  the  worship- 
per of  a  national  effigy,  the  digit  of  an  insanely 
proud  and  greedy  Germania,  and  here  are  the  natu- 
ral consequences. 

The  case  of  the  individual  Italian  compactly  is 
this.  "We  do  not  like  Austrians  and  Germans. 
These  Imperialisms  look  always  over  the  Alps. 
Whatever  increases  German  influence  here  threat- 
ens Italian  life.  The  German  is  a  German  first 
and  a  human  being  afterwards.  .  .  .  But  on  the 
other  hand  England  seems  commercially  indiffer- 
ent to  us  and  France  has  been  economically  hos- 
tile. .  .  ." 

"  After  all,"  I  said  presently  after  reflection,  "  in 
that  matter  of  Pecunia  non  olet:  there  used  to  be 
fusses  about  European  loans  in  China.  And  one 
of  the  favourite  themes  of  British  fiction  and 
drama  before  the  war  was  the  unfortunate  position 
of  the  girl  who  accepted  a  loan  from  the  wicked 
man  to  pay  her  debts  at  bridge." 

"  Italy,"  said  Captain  Pirelli,  "  isn't  a  girl. 
And  she  hasn't  been  playing  bridge." 


BEHIND  THE  FRONT  67 

I  incline  on  the  whole  to  his  point  of  view. 
Money  is  facile  cosmopolitan  stuff.  I  think  that 
any  bank  that  settled  down  in  Italy  is  going  to  be 
slowly  and  steadily  naturalised  Italian,  it  will  be- 
come more  and  more  Italian  until  it  is  wholly 
Italian.  I  would  trust  Italy  to  make  and  keep  the 
Banca  Commerciale  Italiana,  Italian.  I  believe 
the  Italian  brain  is  a  better  brain  than  the  German 
article.  But  still  I  heard  people  talking  of  the 
implicated  organisation  as  if  it  were  engaged  in  the 
most  insidious  duplicities.  "  Wait  for  only  a  year 
or  so  after  the  war,"  said  one  English  authority 
to  me,  "  and  the  mask  will  be  off  and  it  will  be 
frankly  a  *  Deutsche  Bank '  again."  They  assure 
me  that  then  German  enterprises  will  be  favoured 
again,  Italian  and  Allied  enterprises  blockaded  and 
embarrassed,  the  good  understanding  of  Italians 
and  English  poisoned,  entirely  through  this  organ- 
isation. .  .  . 

The  reasonable  uncommercial  man  would  like  to 
reject  all  this  last  sort  of  talk  as  "suspicion 
mania."  So  far  as  the  Banca  Commerciale  Itali- 
ana goes,  I  at  least  find  that  easy  enough ;  I  quote 
that  instance  simply  because  it  is  a  case  where  sus- 
picion has  been  dispelled,  but  in  regard  to  a  score 
of  other  business  veins  it  is  not  so  easy  to  dispel 
suspicion.  This  war  has  been  a  shock  to  reason- 
able men  the  whole  world  over.     They  have  been 


68         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

forced  to  realise  that  after  all  a  great  number  of 
Germans  have  been  engaged  in  a  crack-brained  con- 
spiracy against  the  non-German  world;  that  in  a 
great  number  of  cases  when  one  does  business  with 
a  German  the  business  does  not  end  with  the  indi- 
vidual German.  We  hated  to  believe  that  a  busi- 
ness could  be  tainted  by  German  partners  or  Ger- 
man associations.  If  now  we  err  on  the  side  of 
over-suspicion,  if  (outside  Court  circles  of  course) 
every  German  is  suspect,  it  is  the  German's  little 
weakness  for  i)atriotic  disingenuousness  that  is 
most  to  blame.  .  .  . 

But  anyhow  I  do  not  think  there  is  much  good  in 
a  kind  of  witch-smelling  among  Italian  enterprises 
to  find  the  hidden  German.  Certain  things  are 
necessary  for  Italian  prosperity  and  Italy  must  get 
them.  The  Italians  want  intelligent  and  helpful 
capital.  They  want  a  helpful  France.  They  want 
bituminous  coal  for  metallurgical  purposes.  They 
want  cheap  shipping.  The  French  too  want  metal- 
lurgical coal.  It  is  more  important  for  civilisa- 
tion, for  the  general  goodwill  of  the  Allies  and  for 
Great  Britain  that  these  needs  should  be  supplied 
than  that  individual  British  money-owners  or  shij)- 
owners  should  remain  sluggishly  rich  by  insisting 
upon  high  security  or  high  freights.  The  control 
of  British  coal-mining  and  shipping  in  the  national 
Interests  —  for     international     interests  —  rather 


BEHIND  THE  FEONT  69 

than  for  the  creation  of  that  particularly  passive, 
obstructive  and  wasteful  type  of  wealth,  the  wealth 
of  the  mere  profiteer,  is  as  urgent  a  necessity  for  the 
commercial  welfare  of  France  and  Italy  and  the 
endurance  of  the  Great  Alliance,  as  it  is  for  the 
well-being  of  the  common  man  in  Britain. 


§  3 

I  left  my  military  guide  at  Verona  on  Saturday 
afternoon  and  I  reached  Milan  in  time  to  dine  out- 
side Salvinfs  in  the  Galleria  Vittorio  Emanuele, 
with  an  Italian  fellow  story-writer.  The  place  was 
as  full  as  ever;  we  had  to  wait  for  a  table.  It  is 
notable  that  there  were  still  great  numbers  of  young 
men  not  in  uniform  in  Milan  and  Turin  and  Vi- 
cenza  and  Verona ;  there  is  no  effect  anywhere  of  a 
depletion  of  men.  The  whole  crowded  place  was 
smouldering  w4th  excitement.  The  diners  looked 
about  them  as  they  talked,  some  talked  loudly  and 
seemed  to  be  expressing  sentiments.  Newspaper 
vendors  appeared  at  the  intersection  of  the  arcades, 
uttering  ambiguous  cries,  and  did  a  brisk  business 
of  flitting  white  sheets  among  the  little  tables. 

"  To-night,"  said  my  companion,  "  I  think  we 
shall  declare  war  upon  Germany.  The  decision  is 
being  made." 

I  asked  intelligently  why  this  had  not  been  done 


70        ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

before.  I  forget  the  precise  explanation  he  gave. 
A  young  soldier  in  uniform,  who  had  been  dining 
at  an  adjacent  table  and  Avhom  I  had  not  recognised 
before  as  a  writer  I  had  met  some  years  previously 
in  London,  suddenly  joined  in  our  conversation, 
with  a  slightly  different  explanation.  I  had  been 
carrying  on  a  conversation  in  ungainly  French,  but 
now  I  relapsed  into  English. 

But  indeed  the  matter  of  that  declaration  of  war 
is  as  plain  as  daylight;  the  Italian  national  con- 
sciousness has  not  at  first  that  direct  sense  of  the 
German  danger  that  exists  in  the  minds  of  the 
three  northern  Allies.  To  the  Italian  the  tradi- 
tional enemy  is  Austria,  and  this  war  is  not  pri- 
marily a  war  for  any  other  end  than  the  emancipa- 
tion of  Italy.  Moreover  we  have  to  remember  that 
for  years  there  has  been  serious  commercial  fric- 
tion between  France  and  Italy,  and  considerable 
mutual  elbowing  in  North  Africa.  Both  French- 
men and  Italians  are  resolute  to  remedy  this  now, 
but  the  restoration  of  really  friendly  and  trustful 
relations  is  not  to  be  done  in  a  day.  It  has  been 
an  extraordinary  misfortune  for  Great  Britain  that 
instead  of  boldly  taking  over  her  shipping  from  its 
private  owners  and  using  it  all,  regardless  of  their 
profit,  in  the  interests  of  herself  and  her  allies,  her 
government  has  permitted  so  much  of  it  as  military 
and  naval  needs  have  not  requisitioned  to  continue 


BEHIND  THE  FRONT  71 

to  plj  for  gain,  which  the  government  itself  has 
shared  by  a  tax  on  war  profits.  The  Anglophobe 
elements  in  Italian  public  life  have  made  the  ut- 
most use  of  this  folly  or  laxity  in  relation  more  par- 
ticularly to  the  consequent  dearness  of  coal  in  Italy. 
They  have  carried  on  an  amazingly  effective  cam- 
paign in  which  this  inconvenience,  which  is  due  en- 
tirely to  our  British  slackness  with  the  individual 
profiteer,  is  represented  as  if  it  were  the  delib- 
erate greed  of  the  British  state.  This  certainly 
contributed  very  much  to  fortify  Italy's  disincli- 
nation to  slam  the  door  on  the  German  connec- 
tion. 

I  did  my  best  to  make  it  clear  to  my  two  friends 
that  so  far  from  England  exploiting  Italy,  I  myself 
suffered  in  exactly  the  same  way  as  any  Italian, 
through  the  extraordinary  liberties  of  our  shipping 
interest.  "  I  pay  as  well  as  you  do,"  I  said;  "  the 
shippers'  blockade  of  Great  Britain  is  more  effec- 
tive than  the  submarines'.  My  food,  my  coal,  my 
petrol  are  all  restricted  in  the  sacred  name  of  pri- 
vate property.  You  see,  capital  in  England  has 
hitherto  been  not  an  exploitation  but  a  hold  up. 
We  are  learning  differently  now.  .  .  .  And  any- 
how Mr.  Eunciman  has  been  here,  and  given  Italy 
assurances.  .  .  ." 

In  the  train  to  Modane  this  old  story  recurred 
again.     It    is    imperative    that    English    readers 


72        ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

should  understand  clearly  how  thoroughly  these  lit- 
tle matters  have  been  worked  by  the  enemy. 

Some  slight  civilities  led  to  a  conversation  that 
revealed  the  Italian  lady  in  the  corner  as  an  Irish- 
woman married  to  an  Italian,  and  also  brought  out 
the  latent  English  of  a  very  charming  elderly  lady 
opposite  to  her.  She  had  heard  a  speech,  a  won- 
derful speech  from  a  railway  train,  by  "the  Lord 
Runciman."  He  had  said  the  most  beautiful  things 
about  Italy. 

I  did  my  best  to  echo  those  beautiful  things. 

Then  the  Irishwoman  remarked  that  Mr.  Runci- 
man had  not  satisfied  everybody.  She  and  her  hus- 
band had  met  a  minister  —  I  found  afterwards  he 
was  one  of  the  members  of  the  late  Giolotti  govern- 
ment —  who  had  been  talking  very  loudly  and 
scornfully  of  the  bargain  Italy  was  making  with 
England.  I  assured  her  that  the  desire  of  Eng- 
land was  simply  to  give  Italy  all  that  she  needed. 

"  But,"  said  the  husband  casually,  "  Mr.  Runci- 
man is  a  ship-owner." 

I  explained  that  he  was  nothing  of  the  sort.  It 
was  true  that  he  came  of  a  ship-owning  family  — 
and  perhaps  inherited  a  slight  tendency  to  see 
things  from  a  ship-owning  point  of  view  —  but  in 
England  we  did  not  suspect  a  man  on  such  a  score 
as  that. 


BEHIND  THE  FRONT  73 

"  In  Italy  I  think  we  should/'  said  the  husband 
of  the  Irish  lady. 


§  4 

This  incidental  discussion  is  a  necessary  part  of 
my  impression  of  Italy  at  war.  The  two  western 
allies  and  Great  Britain  in  particular  have  to  re- 
member Italy's  economic  needs,  and  to  prepare  to 
rescue  them  from  the  blind  exploitation  of  private 
profit.  They  have  to  remember  these  needs  too, 
because,  if  they  are  left  out  of  the  picture,  then  it 
becomes  impossible  to  understand  the  full  measure 
of  the  risk  Italy  has  faced  in  undertaking  this  war 
for  an  idea.  With  a  Latin  lucidity  she  has  counted 
every  risk,  and  with  a  Latin  idealism  she  has  taken 
her  place  by  the  side  of  those  who  fight  for  a  liberal 
civilisation  against  a  Byzantine  imperialism. 

As  I  came  out  of  the  brightly  lit  Galleria  Vittorio 
Emanuele  into  the  darkened  Piazza  del  Duomo  I 
stopped  under  the  arcade  and  stood  looking  up  at 
the  shadowy  darkness  of  that  great  pinnacled  barn, 
that  marble  bride-cake,  which  is,  I  suppose,  the 
last  southward  fortress  of  the  Franco-English 
Gothic. 

"  It  was  here,"  said  my  host,  "  that  we  burnt  the 
German  stuff." 


74         ITALY,  FEANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

"What  German  stuff?" 

"  Pianos  and  all  sorts  of  things.  From  the 
shops.  It  is  possible,  you  know,  to  buy  things  too 
cheaply  —  and  give  too  much  for  the  cheapness." 


THE  WESTERN  WAR 

(September,  1916) 

I 

RUINS 

§  1 

If  I  had  to  present  some  particular  scene  as  typical 
of  the  peculiar  vileness  and  mischief  wrought  by 
this  modern  warfare  that  Germany  has  elaborated 
and  thrust  upon  the  world,  I  do  not  think  I  should 
choose  as  my  instance  any  of  those  great  architec- 
tural wrecks  that  seem  most  to  impress  contem- 
porary writers.  I  have  seen  the  injuries  and  ruins 
of  the  cathedrals  at  Arras  and  Soissons  and  the 
wreckage  of  the  great  church  of  Saint  Eloi,  I  have 
visited  the  Hotel  de  Ville  at  Arras  and  seen  photo- 
graphs of  the  present  state  of  the  Cloth  Hall  at 
Ypres  —  a  building  I  knew  very  well  indeed  in  its 
days  of  pride  —  and  I  have  not  been  very  deeply 
moved,  I  suppose  that  one  is  a  little  accustomed 
to  Gothic  ruins,  and  that  there  is  always  something 
monumental  about  old  buildings ;  it  is  only  a  ques- 
tion of  degree  whether  they  are  more  or  less  tum- 
ble-down.    I  was  far  more  desolated  by  the  obliter- 

75 


76         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

ation  of  such  villages  as  Fricourt  and  Dompierre, 
and  by  the  horrible  state  of  the  fields  and  gardens 
round  about  them,  and  my  visit  to  Arras  railway 
station  gave  me  all  the  sensations  of  coming  sud- 
denly on  a  newly  murdered  body. 

Before  I  visited  the  recaptured  villages  in  the 
zone  of  the  actual  fighting,  I  had  an  idea  that  their 
evacuation  w^as  only  temporary,  that  as  soon  as  the 
war  line  moved  towards  Germany  the  people  of  the 
devastated  villages  would  return  to  build  their 
houses  and  till  their  fields  again.  But  I  see  now 
that  not  only  are  homes  and  villages  destroyed  al- 
most beyond  recognition,  but  the  very  fields  are  de- 
stroyed. They  are  wildernesses  of  shell  craters; 
the  old  worked  soil  is  buried  and  great  slabs  of 
crude  earth  have  been  flung  up  over  it.  No  ordi- 
nary plough  will  travel  over  this  frozen  sea,  let 
alone  that  everywhere  chunks  of  timber,  horrible 
tangles  of  rusting  ware,  jagged  fragments  of  big 
shells,  and  a  great  number  of  unexploded  shells  — 
for  the  proportion  of  duds  has  been  sometimes  as 
high  as  one  in  four  or  five  —  are  everywhere  en- 
tangled in  the  mess.  Often  this  chaos  is  stained 
yellow  by  high  explosives,  and  across  it  run  the 
twisting  trenches  and  communication  trenches 
eight,  ten,  or  twelve  feet  deep.  These  will  become 
water  pits  and  mud  pits  into  which  beasts  will  fall. 
It  is  incredible  that  there  should  be  crops  from  any 


KUINS  77 

of  this  region  of  the  push  for  many  years  to  come. 
There  is  no  shade  left ;  the  roadside  trees  are  splin- 
tered stumps  with  scarcely  the  spirit  to  put  forth 
a  leaf ;  a  few  stunted  thistles  and  weeds  are  the  sole 
proofs  that  life  may  still  go  on. 

The  villages  of  this  wide  battle  region  are  not 
ruined ;  they  are  obliterated.  It  is  just  possible  to 
trace  the  roads  in  them,  because  the  roads  have  been 
cleared  and  repaired  for  the  passing  of  the  guns  and 
ammunition.  Fricourt  is  a  tangle  of  German  dug- 
outs. One  dug-out  in  particular  there  promises  to 
become  a  show  place.  It  must  be  the  masterpiece 
of  some  genius  for  dug-outs;  it  is  made  as  if  its 
makers  enjoyed  the  job ;  it  is  like  the  work  of  some 
horrible  badger  among  the  vestiges  of  what  were 
pleasant  human  homes.  You  are  taken  down  a 
timbered  staircase  into  its  warren  of  rooms  and 
passages;  you  are  shown  the  places  under  the 
craters  of  the  great  British  shells,  where  the  wood 
splintered  but  did  not  come  in.  (But  the  arrival 
of  those  shells  must  have  been  a  stunning  moment. ) 
There  are  a  series  of  ingenious  bolting  shafts  set 
with  iron  climbing  bars.  In  this  place  German 
officers  and  soldiers  have  lived  continually  for 
nearly  two  years.  This  war  is,  indeed,  a  Trog- 
lodytic  propaganda.  You  come  up  at  last  at  the 
far  end  into  what  was  once  the  cellar  of  a  decent 
Frenchman's  home. 


78        ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 


But  there  are  stranger  subterranean  refuges  than 
that  at  Fricourt.  At  Dompierre  the  German 
trenches  skirted  the  cemetery,  and  they  turned  the 
dead  out  of  their  vaults  and  made  lurking  places 
of  the  tombs.  I  walked  with  M.  Joseph  Reinach 
about  this  place,  picking  our  way  carefully  amidst 
the  mud  holes  and  the  wire,  and  watched  the  shells 
bursting  away  over  the  receding  battle  line  to  the 
west.  The  wreckage  of  the  graves  was  Dureresque. 
And  here  would  be  a  fragment  of  marble  angel  and 
here  a  split  stone  with  an  inscription.  Splinters 
of  coffins,  rusty  iron  crosses  and  the  petals  of  tin 
flowers  were  trampled  into  the  mud,  amidst  the 
universal  barbed  wire.  A  little  distance  down  the 
slope  is  a  brand  new  cemetery,  with  new  metal 
wreaths  and  even  a  few  flowers ;  it  is  a  disciplined 
array  of  uniform  wooden  crosses,  each  with  its  list 
of  soldiers'  names.  Unless  I  am  wholly  mistaken 
in  France  no  Germans  will  ever  get  a  chance  for 
ever  more  to  desecrate  that  second  cemetery  as  they 
have  done  its  predecessor. 

We  walked  over  the  mud  heaps  and  litter  that 
had  once  been  houses  towards  the  centre  of  Dom- 
pierre village,  and  tried  to  picture  to  ourselves  what 
the  place  had  been.  Many  things  are  recognisable 
in  Dompierre  that  have  altogether  vanished  at  Fri- 
court ;  for  instance,  there  are  quite  large  triangular 
pieces  of  the  church  wall  upstanding  at  Dompierre. 


RUINS  79 

And  a  mile  away  perhaps  down  the  hill  on  the  road 
towards  Amiens,  the  ruins  of  the  sugar  refinery  are 
very  distinct.  A  sugar  refinery  is  an  affair  of  big 
iron  receptacles  and  great  flues  and  pipes  and  so 
forth,  and  iron  does  not  go  down  under  gun  fire  as 
stone  or  brick  does.  The  whole  fabric  was  rusty, 
bent  and  twisted,  gaping  with  shell  holes,  the  rag- 
gedest  display  of  old  iron,  but  it  still  kept  its  gen- 
eral shape,  as  a  smashed,  battered,  and  sunken  iron- 
clad might  do  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea. 

There  wasn't  a  dog  left  of  the  former  life  of 
Dompierre.  There  was  not  even  much  w^ar  traffic 
that  morning  on  the  worn  and  muddy  road.  The 
guns  muttered  some  miles  away  to  the  west,  and  a 
lark  sang.  But  a  little  way  further  on  was  an  in- 
termediate dressing  station,  rigged  up  wdth  wood 
and  tarpaulings,  and  orderlies  were  packing  two 
wounded  men  into  an  ambulance.  The  men  on  the 
stretchers  were  grey  faced,  they  had  come  out  of 
mud  and  they  looked  as  though  they  had  been  trod- 
den on  by  some  gigantic  dirty  boot. 

As  we  came  back  towards  where  our  car  waited 
by  the  cemetery  I  heard  the  jingle  of  a  horseman 
coming  across  the  space  behind  us.  I  turned  and 
beheld  one  of  the  odd  contrasts  that  seem  always 
to  be  happening  in  this  incredible  war.  This  man 
was,  I  suppose,  a  native  officer  of  some  cavalry 
force  from  French  north  Africa,     He  was  a  hand- 


80         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

some  dark  brown  Arab,  wearing  a  long  yellow- 
wbite  robe  and  a  tall  cap  about  which  ran  a  band  of 
sheepskin.  He  was  riding  one  of  those  little  fine 
lean  horses  with  long  tails  that  I  think  are  Bar- 
bary  horses,  his  archaic  saddle  rose  fore  and  aft  of 
him,  and  the  turned-up  toes  of  his  soft  leather 
boots  were  stuck  into  great  silver  stirrups.  He 
might  have  ridden  straight  out  of  the  Arabian 
Nights.  He  passed  thoughtfully,  picking  his  way 
delicately  among  the  wire  and  the  shell  craters,  and 
coming  into  the  road,  broke  into  a  canter  and  van- 
ished in  the  direction  of  the  smashed-up  refinery. 


§  2 

About  such  towns  as  Rheims  or  Arras  or  Soissons 
there  is  an  effect  of  waiting  stillness  like  nothing 
else  I  have  ever  experienced.  At  Arras  the  situ- 
ation is  almost  incredible  to  the  civilian  mind. 
The  British  hold  the  town,  the  Germans  hold  a 
northern  suburb;  at  one  point  near  the  river  the 
trenches  are  just  four  metres  apart.  This  state  of 
tension  has  lasted  for  long  months. 

Unless  a  very  big  attack  is  contemplated,  I  sup- 
pose there  is  no  advantage  in  an  assault;  across 
that  narrow  interval  we  should  only  get  into 
trenches  that  might  be  costly  or  impossible  to  hold, 
and  so  it  would  be  for  the  Germans  on  our  side. 


RUINS  81 

But  there  is  a  kind  of  etiquette  observed ;  loud  vul- 
gar talking  on  either  side  of  the  four  metre  gap 
leads  at  once  to  bomb  throwing.  And  meanwhile 
on  both  sides  guns  of  various  calibre  keep  up  an 
intermittent  fire,  the  German  guns  register  —  I 
think  that  is  the  right  term  —  on  the  cross  of  Arras 
cathedral,  the  British  guns  search  lovingly  for  the 
German  batteries.  As  one  walks  about  the  silent 
streets  one  hears,  "  Bang  —  Pheeee  —  woooo  "  and 
then  far  away,  ^'  dump."  One  of  ours.  Then  pres- 
ently back  comes,  "  Pheeee  —  woooo  —  Bang! " 
One  of  theirs. 

Amidst  these  pleasantries,  the  life  of  the  town 
goes  on.  Shops  are  doing  business  behind  closed 
shutters.  The  cafes  flourish.  Le  Lion  d^ Arras,  an 
excellent  illustrated  paper,  produces  its  valiant 
sheets,  and  has  done  so  since  the  siege  began. 

The  current  number  of  Le  Lion  d' Arras  had  to 
report  a  local  German  success.  Overnight  they 
had  killed  a  gendarme.  There  is  to  be  a  public 
funeral  and  much  ceremony.  It  is  rare  for  any 
one  now  to  get  killed;  everything  is  so  systema- 
tised. 

You  may  buy  postcards  with  views  of  the  de- 
struction at  different  stages,  and  send  them  ofl' 
with  the  Arras  postmark.  The  town  is  not  without 
a  certain  business  activity.  There  is,  I  am  told, 
a  considerable  influx  of  visitors  of  a  special  sort; 


82         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

they  wear  khaki  and  lead  the  Troglodytic  life. 
Thej  play  cards  and  gossip  and  sleep  in  the  shad- 
ows, and  may  not  walk  the  streets.  I  had  one 
glimpse  of  a  dark  crowded  cellar.  Now  and  then 
one  sees  a  British  soldier  on  some  special  errand; 
he  keeps  to  the  pavement,  mindful  of  the  spying 
German  sausage  balloon  in  the  air.  The  streets 
are  strangely  quiet  and  grass  grows  between  the 
stones. 

The  Hotel  de  Ville  and  the  cathedral  are  now 
mostly  heaps  of  litter,  but  many  streets  of  the  town 
have  suffered  very  little.  Here  and  there  a  house 
has  been  crushed  and  one  or  two  have  been  bisected, 
the  front  reduced  to  a  heap  of  splinters  and  the  back 
halves  of  the  rooms  left  so  that  one  sees  the  bed, 
the  hanging  end  of  the  carpet,  the  clothes  cupboard 
yawning  open,  the  pictures  still  on  the  wall.  In 
one  place  a  lamp  stands  on  a  chest  of  drawers,  on 
a  shelf  of  floor  cut  off  completely  from  the  world 
below.  .  .  .  Pheeee  —  woooo  —  Bang!  One  would 
be  irresistibly  reminded  of  a  Sunday  afternoon  in 
the  city  of  London,  if  it  were  not  for  those  un- 
meaning explosions. 

I  went  to  the  station,  a  dead  railway  station.  A 
notice-board  requested  us  to  walk  round  the  silent 
square  on  the  outside  pavement  and  not  across  it. 
The  German  sausage  balloon  had  not  been  up  for 
days;  it  had  probably  gone  off  to  the  Somme;  the 


RUINS  83 

Somme  was  a  terrible  vortex  just  then  which  was 
sucking  away  the  sources  of  the  whole  German 
line;  but  still  discipline  is  discipline.  The  sau- 
sage might  come  peeping  up  at  any  moment  over 
the  station  roof,  and  so  we  skirted  the  square. 
Arras  was  fought  for  in  the  early  stage  of  the  war ; 
two  lines  of  sand-bagged  breastworks  still  run 
obliquely  through  the  station;  one  is  where  the 
porters  used  to  put  luggage  upon  cabs  and  one  runs 
down  the  length  of  the  platform.  The  station  was 
a  fine  one  of  the  modern  type,  with  a  glass  roof 
whose  framework  still  remains,  though  the  glass 
powders  the  floor  and  is  like  a  fine  angular  gravel 
underfoot.  The  rails  are  rails  of  rust,  and  corn- 
flowers and  mustard  and  tall  grasses  grow  amidst 
the  ballast.  The  waiting-rooms  have  suffered  from 
a  shell  or  so,  but  there  are  still  the  sofas  of  green 
plush,  askew,  a  little  pulled  from  their  places.  A 
framed  shipping  advertisement  hung  from  the  wall, 
the  glass  smashed.  The  ticket  bureau  is  as  if  a 
giant  had  leant  against  it ;  on  a  table  and  the  floor 
are  scattered  a  great  number  of  tickets,  mostly  still 
done  up  in  bundles,  to  Douai,  to  Valenciennes,  to 
Lens  and  so  on.  These  tickets  are  souvenirs  too 
portable  to  resist.  I  gave  way  to  that  common 
weakness. 

I  went  out  and  looked  up  and  down  the  line; 
two  deserted  goods  trucks  stood  as  if  they  sheltered 


84         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

under  a  footbridge.  The  grass  poked  out  through 
their  wheels.  The  railway  signals  seemed  uncer- 
tain in  their  intimations;  some  were  up  and  some 
were  down.  And  it  was  as  still  and  empty  as  a 
summer  afternoon  in  Pompeii.  No  train  has  come 
into  Arras  for  two  long  years  now. 

We  lunched  in  a  sunny  garden  with  various  men 
who  love  Arras  but  are  weary  of  it,  and  we  disputed 
about  Irish  politics.  We  discussed  the  political 
future  of  Mr.  F.  E.  Smith.  We  also  disputed 
whether  there  was  an  equivalent  in  English  for 
emhusque.     Every  now  and  then  a  shell  came  over 

—  an  aimless  shell. 

A  certain  liveliness  marked  our  departure  from 
the  town.  Possibly  the  Germans  also  listen  for  the 
rare  infrequent  automobile.  At  any  rate,  as  we 
were  just  starting  on  our  way  back  —  it  is  improper 
to  mention  the  exact  point  from  which  we  started 

—  came  "  Pheeeeee  —  woooo."  Quite  close.  But 
there  was  no  Bang!  One's  mind  hung  expectant 
and  disappointed.     It  was  a  dud  shell. 

And  then  suddenly  I  became  acutely  aware  of 
the  personality  of  our  chauffeur.  It  was  not  his 
business  to  talk  to  us,  but  he  turned  his  head, 
showed  a  sharp  profile,  wry  lips  and  a  bright  ex- 
cited eye,  and  remarked,  '^'^  That  was  a  near  one  — 
anyhow."  He  then  cut  a  corner  over  the  pavement 
and   very   nearly    cut   it   through    a   house.     He 


RUINS  85 

bumped  us  over  a  shell  bole  and  began  to  toot  bis 
horn.  At  every  gateway,  alley,  and  cross  road  in 
those  silent  and  empty  streets  of  Arras  and  fre- 
quently in  between,  he  tooted  punctiliously.  (It 
is  not  proper  to  sound  motor  horns  in  Arras.)  I 
cannot  imagine  what  the  listening  Germans  made 
of  it.  We  passed  the  old  gates  of  that  city  of  fear, 
still  tooting  vehemently,  and  then  with  shoulders 
eloquent  of  his  feelings,  our  chauffeur  abandoned 
the  horn  altogether  and  put  his  whole  soul  into  the 
accelerator.  .  .  . 

§  3 

Soissons  was  in  very  much  the  same  case  as 
Arras.  There  was  the  same  pregnant  silence  in  her 
streets,  the  same  effect  of  waiting  for  the  moment 
which  draws  nearer  and  nearer,  when  the  brood- 
ing German  lines  away  there  will  be  full  of  the 
covert  activities  of  retreat,  when  the  streets  of  the 
old  town  will  stir  with  the  joyous  excitements  of 
the  conclusive  advance. 

The  organisation  of  Soissons  for  defence  is  per- 
fect. I  may  not  describe  it,  but  think  of  whatever 
would  stop  and  destroy  an  attacking  party  or  foil 
the  hostile  shell.  It  is  there.  Men  have  had  noth- 
ing else  to  do  and  nothing  else  to  think  of  for  two 
years.  I  crossed  the  bridge  the  English  made  in 
the  pursuit  after  the  Marne,  and  went  into  the  first 
line   trenches   and   peeped   towards   the   invisible 


86        ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

enemy.  To  show  me  exactly  where  to  look  a  sev- 
enty-five obliged  with  a  shell.  In  the  crypt  of  the 
Abbey  of  St.  Medard  near  by  —  it  must  provoke  the 
Germans  bitterly  to  think  that  all  the  rest  of  the 
building  vanished  ages  ago  —  the  French  boys  sleep 
beside  the  bones  of  King  Childebert  the  Second. 
They  shelter  safely  in  the  prison  of  Louis  the  Pious. 
An  ineffective  shell  from  a  German  seventy-seven 
burst  in  the  walled  garden  close  at  hand  as  I  came 
out  from  those  thousand-year-old  memories  again. 
The  cathedral  at  Soissons  had  not  been  nearly 
so  completely  smashed  up  as  the  one  at  Arras;  I 
doubt  if  it  has  been  very  greatly  fired  into.  There 
is  a  peculiar  beauty  in  the  one  long  vertical  strip 
of  blue  sky  between  the  broken  arches  in  the  chief 
gap  where  the  wall  has  tumbled  in.  And  the  peo- 
ple are  holding  on  in  many  cases  exactly  as  they 
are  doing  in  Arras;  I  do  not  know  whether  it  is 
habit  or  courage  that  is  most  apparent  in  this  per- 
sistence. About  the  chief  place  of  the  town  there 
are  ruined  houses,  but  some  invisible  hand  still 
keeps  the  grass  of  the  little  garden  within  bounds 
and  has  put  out  a  bed  of  begonias.  In  Paris  I  met 
a  charming  American  writer,  the  wife  of  a  French 
artist,  the  lady  who  wrote  My  House  on  the  Field 
of  Honour.  She  gave  me  a  queer  little  anecdote. 
On  account  of  some  hospital  work  she  had  been  al- 
lowed to  visit  Soissons  —  a  rare  privilege  for  a 


KUINS  87 

woman  —  and  she  stayed  the  night  in  a  lodging. 
The  room  into  which  she  was  shown  was  like  any 
other  French  provincial  bedroom,  and  after  her 
Anglo-Saxon  habit  she  walked  straight  to  the  win- 
dows to  open  them. 

They  looked  exactly  like  any  other  French  bed- 
room windows,  with  neat,  clean  white  lace  curtains 
across  them.  The  curtains  had  been  put  there,  be- 
cause they  were  the  proper  things  to  go  there. 

"  Madame,"  said  the  hostess,  "  need  not  trouble 
to  open  the  glass.  There  is  no  more  glass  in  Sois- 
sons." 

But  there  were  the  curtains  nevertheless.  There 
was  all  the  precise  delicacy  of  the  neatly  curtained 
home  life  of  France. 

And  she  told  me  too  of  the  people  at  dinner,  and 
how  as  the  little  serving  maid  passed  about  a  proud 
erection  of  cake  and  conserve  and  cream,  came  the 
familiar  "  Pheeeee  —  wooooo  —  Bang! " 

"  That  must  have  been  the  Seminaire,"  said  some 
one. 

As  one  speaks  of  the  weather  or  a  passing  cart. 

"  It  was  in  the  Kue  de  la  Buerie,  M'sieur,"  the 
little  maid  asserted  with  quiet  conviction,  poising 
the  trophy  of  confectionery  for  Madame  Huard 
with  an  unshaking  hand. 

So  stoutly  do  the  roots  of  French  life  hold  be- 
neath the  tramplings  of  war. 


II 

THE  GKADES  OF  lWAR 

§  1 

SoissoNS  and  Arras  when  I  visited  them  were  like 
samples  of  the  deadlock  war ;  they  were  like  Bloch 
come  true.  The  living  fact  about  war  so  far  is  that 
Bloch  has  not  come  true  —  yet.  I  think  in  the  end 
he  will  come  true,  but  not  so  far  as  this  war  is  con- 
cerned, and  to  make  that  clear  it  is  necessary  to 
trouble  the  reader  with  a  little  disquisition  upon 
war  —  omitting  as  far  as  is  humanly  possible  all 
mention  of  Napoleon's  campaigns. 

The  development  of  war  has  depended  largely 
upon  two  factors.  One  of  these  is  invention. 
New  weapons  and  new  methods  have  become  avail- 
able, and  have  modified  tactics,  strategy,  the  rela- 
tive advantage  of  offensive  and  defensive.  The 
other  chief  factor  in  the  evolution  of  the  war  has 
been  social  organisation.  As  Machiavelli  points 
out  in  his  Art  of  War,  there  was  insuflflcient  social 
stability  in  Europe  to  keep  a  properly  trained  and 
disciplined  infantry  in  the  field  from  the  passing 

of  the  Roman  legions  to  the  appearance  of  the  Swiss 

88 


THE  GRADES  OF  WAR  89 

footmen.  He  makes  it  very  clear  tliat  lie  considers 
the  fighting  of  the  Middle  Ages,  though  frequent 
and  bloody,  to  be  a  confused,  mobbing  sort  of  affair, 
and  politically  and  technically  unsatisfactory. 
The  knight  was  an  egotist  in  armour.  Machiavelli 
does  small  justice  to  the  English  bowmen.  It  is 
interesting  to  note  that  Switzerland,  that  present 
island  of  peace,  was  regarded  by  him  as  the  mother 
of  modern  war.  Swiss  aggression  was  the  curse  of 
the  Milanese.  That  is  a  remark  by  the  way;  our 
interest  here  is  to  note  that  modern  war  emerges 
upon  history  as  the  sixteenth  century  unfolds,  as 
an  affair  in  which  the  essential  factor  is  the  drilled 
and  trained  infantryman.  The  artillery  is  devel- 
oping as  a  means  of  breaking  the  infantry ;  cavalry 
for  charging  them  when  broken,  for  pursuit  and 
for  scouting.  To  this  day  this  triple  division  of 
forces  dominates  soldiers'  minds.  The  mechanical 
development  of  w^arfare  has  consisted  largely  in 
the  development  of  facilities  for  enabling  or  hin- 
dering the  infantry  to  get  to  close  quarters.  As 
that  has  been  made  easy  or  difficult  the  offensive 
or  the  defensive  has  predominated. 

A  history  of  militai^y  method  for  the  last  few  cen- 
turies would  be  a  record  of  successive  alternate 
steps  in  which  offensive  and  defensive  contrivances 
pull  ahead,  first  one  and  then  the  other.  Their 
relative  fluctuations  are  marked  b}^  the  varying 


90         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 


length  of  campaigns.  From  the  very  outset  we 
have  the  ditch  and  the  wall ;  the  fortified  place  upon 
a  pass  or  main  road,  as  a  check  to  the  advance. 
Artillery  improves,  then  fortification  improves. 
The  defensive  holds  its  own  for  a  long  period,  wars 
are  mainly  siege  wars,  and  for  a  century  before 
the  advent  of  Napoleon  there  are  no  big  successful 
sweeping  invasions,  no  marches  upon  the  enemy 
capital  and  so  on.  There  were  wars  of  reduction, 
wars  of  annoyance.  Napoleon  developed  the  of- 
fensive by  seizing  upon  the  enthusiastic  infantry  of 
the  republic,  improving  transport  and  mobile  ar- 
tillery, using  road-making  as  an  aggressive  method. 
In  spite  of  the  successful  experiment  of  Torres 
Vedras  and  the  warning  of  Plevna  the  offensive 
remained  dominant  throughout  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. ' 

But  three  things  were  working  quietly  towards 
the  rehabilitation  of  the  defensive;  firstly  the  in- 
creased range,  accuracy  and  rapidity  of  rifle  fire, 
with  which  we  may  include  the  development  of  the 
machine  gun;  secondly  the  increasing  use  of  the 
spade,  and  thirdly  the  invention  of  barbed  wire. 
By  the  end  of  the  century  these  things  had  come 
so  far  into  military  theory  as  to  produce  the  great 
essay  of  Bloch,  and  to  surprise  the  British  military 
people,  who  are  not  accustomed  to  read  books  or 
talk  shop,  in  the  Boer  war.     In  the  thinly  popu- 


THE  GRADES  OF  WAR  91 

lated  war  region  of  South  Africa  the  difficulties  of 
forcing  entrenched  positions  were  largely  met  by 
outflanking,  the  Boers  had  only  a  limited  amount  of 
barbed  wire  and  could  be  held  down  in  their 
trenches  by  shrapnel,  and  even  at  the  beginning  of 
the  present  war  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  we 
and  our  Allies  were  still  largely  unprepared  for 
the  full  possibilities  of  trench  warfare,  we  at- 
tempted a  war  of  manoeuvres,  war  at  about  the 
grade  to  which  war  had  been  brought  in  1898,  and 
it  was  the  Germans  who  first  brought  the  war  up 
to  date  by  entrenching  upon  the  Aisne.  We  had, 
of  course,  a  few  aeroplanes  at  that  time,  but  they 
were  used  chiefly  as  a  sort  of  accessory  cavalry  for 
scouting;  our  artillery  was  light  and  our  shell  al- 
most wholly  shrapnel. 

Now  the  grades  of  warfare  that  have  been  devel- 
oped since  the  present  war  began,  may  be  regarded 
as  a  series  of  elaborations  and  counter  elaborations 
of  the  problem  which  begins  as  a  line  of  trenches 
behind  wire,  containing  infantry  with  rifles  and 
machine  guns.  Against  this  an  infantry  attack 
with  the  bayonet,  after  shrapnel  fails.  This  we 
will  call  Grade  A.  To  this  the  offensive  replies 
with  improved  artillery,  and  particularly  with  high 
explosive  shell  instead  of  shrapnel.  By  this  the 
wire  is  blown  away,  the  trench  wrecked  and  the 
defender  held  down  as  the  attack  charges  up.     This 


92         ITALY,  FRA:NCE  AND  BRITAIN 

is  Grade  B.  But  now  appear  the  dug-out  elaborat- 
ing the  trench  and  the  defensive  battery  behind  the 
trench.  The  defenders,  under  the  preliminary 
bombardment,  get  into  the  dug-outs  with  their 
rifles  and  machine  guns,  and  emerge  as  fresh  as 
paint  as  the  attack  comes  up.  Obviously  there  is 
much  scope  for  invention  and  contrivance  in  the 
dug-out  as  the  reservoir  of  counter  attacks.  Its 
possibilities  have  been  very  ably  exploited  by  the 
Germans.  Also  the  defensive  batteries  behind, 
which  have  of  course  the  exact  range  of  the  cap- 
tured trench,  concentrate  on  it  and  destroy  the  at- 
tack at  the  moment  of  victory.  The  trench  falls 
back  to  its  former  holders  under  this  fire  and  a 
counter  attack.  Check  again  for  the  offensive. 
Even  if  it  can  take,  it  cannot  hold  a  position  under 
these  conditions.  This  we  will  call  Grade  A2;  a 
revised  and  improved  A.  What  is  the  retort  from 
the  opposite  side?  Obviously  to  enhance  and  ex- 
tend the  range  of  the  preliminary  bombardment 
behind  the  actual  trench  line,  to  destroy  or  block, 
if  it  can,  the  dug-outs  and  destroy  or  silence  the 
counter  offensive  artillery.  If  it  can  do  that,  it 
can  go  on;  otherwise  Bloch  wins. 

If  fighting  went  on  only  at  the  ground  level  Bloch 
would  win  at  this  stage,  but  here  it  is  that  the 
aeroplane  comes  in.  From  the  ground  it  would  be 
practically  impossible  to  locate  the  enemies'  dug- 


THE  GRADES  OP  WAR  93 

outs,  secondary  defences,  and  batteries.  But  the 
aeroplane  takes  us  immediately  to  a  new  grade  of 
warfare,  in  which  the  location  of  the  defender's 
secondary  trenches,  guns,  and  even  machine-gun 
positions  becomes  a  matter  of  extreme  precision  — 
provided  only  that  the  offensive  has  secured  com- 
mand of  the  air  and  can  send  his  aeroplanes  freely 
over  the  defender  lines.  Then  the  preliminary 
bombardment  becomes  of  a  much  more  extensive 
character;  the  defender's  batteries  are  tackled  by 
the  overpowering  fire  of  guns  they  are  unable  to 
locate  and  answer;  the  secondary  dug-outs  and 
strong  places  are  plastered  down,  a  barrage  fire 
shuts  off  support  from  the  doomed  trenches,  the 
men  in  these  trenches  are  held  down  by  a  concen- 
trated artillery  fire  and  the  attack  goes  up  at  last 
to  hunt  them  out  of  the  dug-outs  and  collect  the  sur- 
vivors. Until  the  attack  is  comfortably  established 
in  the  captured  trench,  the  fire  upon  the  old  coun- 
ter attack  position  goes  on.  This  is  the  grade. 
Grade  B2,  to  which  modern  warfare  has  attained 
upon  the  Somme  front.  The  appearance  of  the 
Tank  has  only  increased  the  offensive  advantage. 
There,  at  present,  warfare  rests. 

There  is,  I  believe,  only  one  grade  higher  possi- 
ble. The  success  of  B2  depends  upon  the  complete- 
ness of  the  aerial  observation.  The  invention  of  an 
anti-aircraft  gun  which  w^ould  be  practically  sure 


94         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

of  liitting  and  bringing  down  an  aeroplane  at  any 
height  whatever  up  to  20,000  feet,  would  restore  the 
defensive  and  establish  what  I  should  think  must 
be  the  final  grade  of  war,  A3.  But  at  present  noth- 
ing of  the  sort  exists  and  nothing  of  the  sort  is 
likely  to  exist  for  a  very  long  time ;  at  present  hit- 
ting an  aeroplane  by  any  sort  of  gun  at  all  is  a 
rare  and  uncertain  achievement.  Such  a  gun  is 
not  impossible  and  therefore  we  must  suppose  such 
a  gun  will  some  day  be  constructed,  but  it  will  be 
of  a  novel  type  and  character,  unlike  anything  at 
present  in  existence.  The  grade  of  fighting  that  I 
was  privileged  to  witness  on  the  Somme,  the  grade 
at  which  a  steady  successful  offensive  is  possible, 
is  therefore,  I  conclude,  the  grade  at  which  the 
present  war  will  end. 


But  now  having  thus  spread  out  the  broad  theory 
of  the  business,  let  me  go  on  to  tell  some  of  the  actu- 
alities of  the  Somme  offensive.  I  visited  both  the 
French  and  English  fronts,  and  I  have  brought 
away  an  impression  that  at  the  time  of  my  visit, 
modern  war  at  its  highest  level,  war  at  grade  B2, 
was  being  fought  most  perfectly  and  systematically 
by  the  French.  Comparisons  in  these  matters  are 
diflBcult  I  know,  but  my  impression  is  at  least  car- 


THE  GRADES  OP  WAR  95 

ried  out  by  the  fact  that  at  the  time  of  my  visit  the 
French  were  advancing  more  rapidly,  taking  more 
prisoners  and  suffering  a  lower  percentage  of 
casualties  than  the  British.  In  certain  respects, 
however,  the  British  were  developing  novelties 
ahead  of  the  French.  The  key  fact  u^jon  both  Brit- 
ish and  French  fronts  was  the  complete  ascendency 
of  the  Allied  aeroplanes.  It  is  the  necessary  pre- 
liminary condition  for  the  method  upon  which  the 
great  generals  of  the  French  army  rely  in  this  sani- 
tary task  of  shoving  the  German  Thing  off  the  soil 
of  Belgium  and  France  back  into  their  own  land. 
A  man  who  is  frequently  throwing  out  prophe- 
cies is  bound  to  score  a  few  successes,  and  one  that 
I  may  legitimately  claim  is  my  early  insistence 
upon  the  fact  that  the  quality  of  the  German  avi- 
ator was  likely  to  be  inferior  to  that  of  his  French 
or  British  rival.  The  ordinary  German  has  neither 
the  flexible  quality  of  body,  the  quickness  of  nerve, 
the  temperament,  nor  the  mental  habits  that  make 
a  successful  aviator.  This  idea  was  first  put  into 
my  head  by  considering  the  way  in  which  Germans 
walk  and  carry  themselves,  and  by  noting  the  dif- 
ference in  nimbleness  between  the  cyclists  in  the 
streets  of  German  and  French  towns.  It  was  con- 
firmed by  a  conversation  I  had  with  a  German  avi- 
ator who  was  also  a  dramatist,  and  who  came  to  see 
me   upon    some    copyright    matter   in    1912.     He 


96         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

broached  the  view  that  aviation  would  destroy  de- 
mocracy, because  he  said  only  aristocrats  would 
make  aviators.  (He  was  a  man  of  good  family.) 
With  a  duke  or  so  in  my  mind  I  asked  him  why. 
Because,  he  explained,  a  man  without  aristocratic 
quality  in  tradition,  cannot  possibly  endure  the 
"  high  loneliness  "  of  the  air.  That  sounded  rather 
like  nonsense  at  the  time,  and  then  I  reflected  that 
for  a  Prussian  that  might  be  true.  There  may  be 
something  in  the  German  composition  that  does  de- 
mand association  and  the  support  of  pride  and 
training  before  dangers  can  be  faced.  The  Ger- 
mans are  social  and  methodical,  the  French  and 
English  by  comparison  chaotic  and  instinctive; 
perhaps  the  very  readiness  for  a  conscious  orderli- 
ness that  makes  the  German  so  formidable  upon 
the  ground,  so  thorough  and  so  fore-seeing,  makes 
him  slow  and  unsure  in  the  air.  At  any  rate  the 
experiences  of  this  war  have  seemed  to  carry  out 
this  hypothesis.  The  German  aviators  will  not  as 
a  class  stand  up  to  those  of  the  Allies.  They  are 
not  nimble  in  the  air.  Such  champions  as  they 
have  produced  have  been  men  of  one  trick ;  one  of 
their  great  men,  Immelmann  —  he  was  put  down 
by  an  English  boy  a  month  or  so  ago  —  had  a  sort 
of  hawk's  swoop.  He  would  go  very  high  and  then 
come  down  at  his  utmost  pace  at  his  antagonist, 
firing  his  machine  gun  at  him  as  he  came.     If  he 


THE  GRADES  OF  WAR  97 

missed  in  this  hysterical  lunge,  he  went  on  down. 
.  .  .  This  does  not  strike  the  Allied  aviator  as  very 
brilliant.  A  gentleman  of  that  sort  can  sooner  or 
later  be  caught  on  the  rise  by  going  for  him  over 
the  German  lines. 

The  first  phase,  then,  of  the  highest  grade  of- 
fensive, the  ultimate  development  of  war  regard- 
less of  expense,  is  the  clearance  of  the  air.  Such 
German  machines  as  are  up  are  put  down  by  fight- 
ing aviators.  These  last  fly  high ;  in  the  clear  blue 
of  the  early  morning  they  look  exactly  like  gnats; 
some  trail  a  little  smoke  in  the  sunshine ;  they  take 
their  machine  guns  in  pursuit  over  the  German 
lines,  and  the  German  anti-aircraft  guns,  the  Archi- 
balds, begin  to  pattern  the  sky  about  them  with  lit- 
tle balls  of  black  smoke.  From  below  one  does  not 
see  men  nor  feel  that  men  are  there;  it  is  as  if  it 
were  an  affair  of  midges.  Close  after  the  fighting 
machines  come  the  photographic  aeroplanes,  with 
cameras  as  long  as  a  man  is  high,  flying  low  —  at 
four  or  five  thousand  feet  that  is  —  over  the  enemy 
trenches.  The  Archibald  leaves  these  latter  alone ; 
it  cannot  fire  a  shell  to  explode  safely  so  soon  after 
firing ;  but  they  are  shot  at  with  rifles  and  machine 
guns.  They  do  not  mind  being  shot  at;  only  the 
petrol  tank  and  the  head  and  thorax  of  the  pilot 
are  to  be  considered  vital.  They  will  come  back 
with  forty  or  fifty  bullet  holes  in  the  fabric.     They 


98         ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

will  go  under  this  fire  along  the  length  of  the  Ger- 
man positions  exposing  plate  after  plate;  one  ma- 
chine will  get  a  continuous  panorama  of  many 
miles  and  then  come  back  straight  to  the  aerodrome 
to  develop  its  plates. 

There  is  no  waste  of  time  about  the  business,  the 
photographs  are  developed  as  rapidly  as  possible. 
Within  an  hour  and  a  half  after  the  photographs 
were  taken  the  first  prints  are  going  through  into 
the  bureau  for  the  examination  of  the  photographs. 
It  was  in  all  this  part  of  the  work  that  it  seemed 
to  me  the  French  were  rather  in  front  of  the  Brit- 
ish ;  they  were  more  rapid ;  their  work  rooms  were 
better  arranged  and  their  methods  of  examination 
more  businesslike.  It  has  probably  been  planned 
by  some  experienced  business  organiser,  while  the 
British  organisation,  photographs  at  this  end  of 
the  village  and  maps  at  that,  and  a  sort  of  gossip- 
ing drift  between  the  two,  had  all  the  casualness 
of  the  rather  absent-minded  amateur.  But  that 
may  be  a  chance  contrast.  And  things  soon  get 
put  right  nowadays.  In  the  end  both  British  and 
French  air  photographs  are  thoroughly  scrutinised 
and  marked. 

An  air  photograph  to  an  inexperienced  eye  is  not 
a  very  illuminating  thing;  one  makes  out  roads, 
blurs  of  wood,  and  rather  vague  buildings.  But 
the  examiner  has  an  eye  that  has  been  in  training ; 


THE  GRADES  OF  WAR  99 

he  is  a  picked  man;  he  has  at  hand  yesterday's 
photographs  and  last  week's  photographs,  marked 
maps  and  all  sorts  of  aids  and  records.  If  he  is  a 
Frenchman  he  is  only  too  happy  to  explain  his 
ideas  and  methods.  Here,  he  will  point  out,  is  a 
little  difference  between  the  German  trench  beyond 
the  wood  since  yesterday.  For  a  number  of  rea- 
sons he  thinks  that  will  be  a  new  machine  gun  em- 
placement ;  here  at  the  corner  of  the  farm  wall  they 
have  been  making  another.  This  battery  here  — 
isn't  it  plain?  Well,  it's  a  dummy.  The  grass  in 
front  of  it  hasn't  scorched,  and  there's  been  no  seri- 
ous wear  on  the  road  here  for  a  week.  Presently 
the  Germans  will  send  one  or  two  waggons  up  and 
down  that  road  and  instruct  them  to  make  figures 
of  eight  to  imitate  scorching  on  the  grass  in  front 
of  the  gun.  We  know  all  about  that.  The  real 
wear  on  the  road,  compare  this  and  this  and  this, 
ends  here  at  this  spot.  It  turns  off  into  the  wood. 
There's  a  sort  of  track  in  the  trees.  Now  look 
where  the  trees  are  just  a  little  displaced!  (This 
lens  is  rather  better  for  that.)  That's  one  gun. 
You  see?     Here,  I  will  show  you  another.  .  .  . 

That  process  goes  on  two  or  three  miles  behind 
the  front  line.  Very  clean  young  men  in  white 
overalls  do  it  as  if  it  were  a  labour  of  love.  And 
the  Germans  in  the  trenches,  the  German  gunners, 
know  it  is  going  on.     They  know  that  in  the  quick- 


100       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

est  possible  way  these  observations  of  the  aeroplane 
that  was  over  them  just  now  will  go  to  the  gunners. 
The  careful  gunner,  firing  by  the  map  and  marking 
by  aeroplane,  kite  balloon  or  direct  observation, 
Avill  be  getting  on  to  the  located  guns  and  machine 
guns  in  another  couple  of  hours.  The  French 
claim  that  they  have  located  new  batteries,  got  their 
tir  de  demolition  upon  them  and  destroyed  them 
within  five  hours.  The  British  I  told  of  that  found 
it  incredible.  Every  day  the  French  print  special 
maps  showing  the  guns,  sham  guns,  trenches,  every- 
thing of  significance  behind  the  German  lines, 
showing  everything  that  has  happened  in  the  last 
four-and-twenty  hours.  It  is  pitiless.  It  is  in- 
decent. The  map  making  and  printing  goes  on  in 
the  room  next  and  most  convenient  to  the  examina- 
tion of  the  photographs.  And,  as  I  say,  the  German 
army  knows  of  this,  and  knows  that  it  cannot  pre- 
vent it  because  of  its  aerial  weakness.  That  knowl- 
edge is  not  the  least  among  the  forces  that  is 
crumpling  up  the  German  resistance  upon  the 
Somme. 

I  visited  some  French  guns  during  the  tir  de  de- 
molition phase.  I  counted  nine  aeroplanes  and 
twenty-six  kite  balloons  in  the  air  at  the  same  time. 
There  was  nothing  German  visible  in  the  air  at  all. 

It  is  a  case  of  eyes  and  no  eyes.  Against  this 
precise  and  careful  method  of  localisation  the  Ger- 


THE  GRADES  OF  WAR  101 

mans  have  only  the  listening  method.  It  is  a  good 
method  for  the  infrequent  shells  of  such  places  as 
Arras  or  Soissons,  but  it  is  not  good  against  a  rapid 
fire.  The  microphone  gets  confused  between  this 
gun  and  that.  The  French  attack  resolves  itself 
into  a  triple  system  of  gun-fire.  First  for  a  day  or 
so,  or  two  or  three  days,  there  is  demolition  fire  to 
smash  up  all  the  exactly  located  batteries,  organi- 
sations, supports,  behind  the  front  line  enemy 
trenches ;  then  comes  barrage  fire  to  cut  off  supplies 
and  reinforcements;  then,  before  the  advance,  the 
hammering  down  fire,  "  heads  down,"  upon  the 
trenches.  When  at  last  this  stops  and  the  infantry 
goes  forward  to  rout  out  the  trenches  and  the  dug- 
outs, they  go  forward  with  a  minimum  of  incon- 
venience. The  first  wave  of  attack  fights,  destroys, 
or  disarms  the  surviving  Germans  and  sends  them 
back  across  the  open  to  the  French  trenches.  They 
run  as  fast  as  they  can,  hands  up,  and  are  shep- 
herded farther  back.  The  French  set  to  work  to 
turn  over  the  captured  trenches  and  organise  them- 
selves against  any  counter  attack  that  may  face  the 
barrage  fire. 

That  is  the  formula  of  the  present  fighting,  which 
the  French  have  developed.  After  an  advance 
there  is  a  pause,  while  the  guns  move  up  nearer  the 
Germans  and  fresh  aeroplane  reconnaissance  goes 
on.    Nowhere  on  this  present  offensive  has  a  Ger- 


102       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

man  counter  attack  had  more  than  the  most  inci- 
dental success ;  and  commonly  they  have  had  fright- 
ful losses.  Then  after  a  few  days  of  refreshment 
and  accumulation,  the  Allied  attack  resumes. 

That  is  the  perfected  method  of  the  French  of- 
fensive. I  had  the  pleasure  of  learning  its  broad 
outlines  in  good  company,  in  the  company  of  M. 
Joseph  Reinach  and  Colonel  Carence,  the  military 
writer.  Their  talk  together  and  with  me  and  in 
the  various  messes  at  which  we  lunched  was  for  the 
most  part  a  keen  discussion  of  every  detail  and 
every  possibility  of  the  offensive  machine;  every 
French  officer's  mess  seems  a  little  council  upon 
the  one  supreme  question  in  France,  how  to  do  it 
test.  M.  Reinach  has  made  certain  suggestions 
about  the  co-operation  of  French  and  British  that  I 
will  discuss  elsewhere,  but  one  great  theme  was  the 
constitution  of  "the  ideal  battery."  For  years 
French  military  thought  has  been  acutely  attentive 
to  the  best  number  of  guns  for  effective  common 
action,  and  has  tended  rather  to  the  small  battery 
theory.  My  two  companies  were  playing  with  the 
idea  that  the  ideal  battery  was  a  battery  of  one  big 
gun,  with  its  own  aeroplane  and  kite  balloon  mark- 
ing for  it.  I  take  it  the  commanding  officer  would 
spend  much  of  his  time  in  the  air,  which  would 
scarcely  suit  some  of  our  own  senior  gunners. 

At  the  time  when  I  visited  the  British  and  French 


THE  GRADES  OF  WAR  103 

fronts  (early  in  September)  I  formed  the  impres- 
sion tliat  this  formula  of  attack  was  being  far  more 
thoroughly  and  effectively  followed  out  by  the 
French  than  by  the  British.  I  thought  the  French 
were  altogether  more  businesslike.  I  make  this 
statement  with  the  most  careful  indication  of  the 
period  to  which  it  refers,  because  in  all  these  mat- 
ters things  change  very  rapidly  and  may  at  any 
time  change.  There  is  every  reason  to  suppose  that 
in  the  early  stages  of  the  Somme  offensive  the 
"  science  "  of  the  British  general  staff  was  mark- 
edly below  that  of  the  French,  and  that  very  many 
thousands  of  British  casualties  were  due  to  that 
inferiority.  The  British  did  their  work,  but  they 
paid  more  heavily,  and  they  were  still  paying  more 
heavily  early  in  September.  The  British  infantry 
and  the  British  subalterns  were  magnificent,  the 
British  aeroplane  work  was  unsurpassable,  the 
British  guns  and  munitions  are  admirable  in  qual- 
ity and  almost  inexhaustibly  abundant;  but  the 
offensive  machine  as  a  whole  was  certainly  not  yet 
knit  together  and  working  together  like  the  French 
machine.  The  brute  fact  that  English  people  have 
to  face  is  that  there  is  still  something  "  amateur- 
ish "  in  the  quality  of  the  higher  grades  of  British 
officer.  Typically  he  is  brave  as  a  lion  and  all  that 
sort  of  thing,  he  has  all  the  schoolboy  virtues  and 
so  on,  his  social  position  is  excellent,  his  appear- 


101       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BEITAIN 

ance  and  his  sense  of  appearances  are  exquisite,  but 
when  it  comes  to  hard  intellectual  work  he  is,  to 
speak  plainly,  a  slacker,  and  he  is  often  appallingly 
ignorant  and  timid  or  mulishly  conservative  in  the 
face  of  ideas  and  novelties. 


§  3 

But  upon  the  British  side  if  there  does  seem  to  be 
a  certain  wasteful  want  of  logical  coherence,  there 
is  also  a  very  considerable  amount  of  scattered  ini- 
tiative of  the  brightest  sort  thrusting  through  the 
obstructions.  That  unsystematic  individualism 
that  wastes  our  men  in  attacks  does  seem  to  be  as- 
sociated with  the  adventurous  self-reliance  needed 
in  the  air.  The  British  aeroplanes  do  not  simply 
fight  the  Germans  out  of  the  sky;  they  also  make 
themselves  an  abominable  nuisance  by  bombing  the 
enemy  trenches.  For  every  German  bomb  that  is 
dropped  by  aeroplane  upon  or  behind  the  British 
lines,  about  twenty  go  down  on  the  heads  of  the 
Germans.  British  air  bombs  upon  guns,  stores  and 
communications  do  some  of  the  work  that  the 
French  effect  by  their  systematic  demolition  fire. 

And  the  British  aviator  has  discovered  and  is 
rapidly  developing  an  altogether  fresh  branch  of 
air  activity  in  the  machine-gun  attack  at  a  very  low 
altitude.     Originally  I  believe  this  was  tried  in 


THE  GRADES  OF  WAR  105 

western  Egypt,  but  now  it  is  being  increasingly  used 
upon  the  British  front  in  France.  An  aeroplane 
which  comes  down  suddenly,  travelling  very  rap- 
idly, to  a  few  hundred  feet,  is  quite  hard  enough 
to  hit,  even  if  it  is  not  squirting  bullets  from  a  ma- 
chine gun  as  it  advances.  Against  infantry  in  the 
open  this  sort  of  thing  is  extremely  demoralising. 
It  is  a  method  of  attack  still  in  its  infancy,  but  there 
are  great  possibilities  for  it  in  the  future,  when  the 
bending  and  cracking  German  line  gives  as  ulti- 
mately it  must  give  if  this  offensive  does  not  re- 
lax. 

Now  a  cavalry  pursuit  alone  may  easily  come 
upon  disaster,  cavalry  can  be  so  easily  held  up  by 
wire  and  a  few  machine  guns.  I  think  the  Germans 
have  reckoned  on  that  and  on  automobiles,  prob- 
ably only  the  decay  of  their  morale  prevents  their 
opening  their  lines  now  on  the  chance  of  the  British 
attempting  some  such  folly  as  a  big  cavalry  ad- 
vance, but  I  do  not  think  the  Germans  have  reck- 
oned on  the  use  of  machine  guns  in  aeroplanes,  sup- 
ported by  and  supporting  cavalry  or  automobiles. 
At  the  present  time  I  should  imagine  there  is  no 
more  perplexing  consideration  amidst  the  many 
perplexities  of  the  German  military  intelligence 
than  the  new  complexion  put  upon  pursuit  by  these 
low  level  air  developments.  It  may  mean  that  in 
all  sorts  of  positions  where  they  had  counted  confi- 


106      ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

dently  on  getting  away,  they  may  not  be  able  to  get 
away  —  from  the  face  of  a  scientific  advance  prop- 
erly commanding  and  using  modern  material  in  a 
dexterous  and  intelligent  manner. 


Ill 

THE  WAR  LANDSCAPE 


I  SAW  rather  more  of  the  British  than  of  the 
French  aviators  because  of  the  vileness  of  the 
weather  when  I  visited  the  latter.  It  is  quite  im- 
possible for  me  to  institute  comparisons  between 
these  two  services.  I  should  think  that  the  British 
organisation  I  saw  would  be  hard  to  beat,  and  that 
none  but  the  French  could  hope  to  beat  it.  On  the 
Western  front  the  aviation  has  been  screwed  up  to 
a  very  much  higher  level  than  on  the  Italian  line. 
In  Italy  it  has  not  become,  as  it  has  in  France,  the 
decisive  factor.  The  war  on  the  Carso  front  in 
Italy  —  I  say  nothing  of  the  mountain  warfare, 
which  is  a  thing  in  itself  —  is  in  fact  still  in  the 
stage  that  I  have  called  B.  It  is  good  warfare  well 
waged,  but  not  such  an  intensity  of  warfare.  It 
has  not,  as  one  says  of  pianos  and  voices,  the  same 
compass. 

This  is  true  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  Italians 
alone  of  all  the  western  powers  have  adopted  a  type 
of  aeroplane  larger  and  much  more  powerful  than 

107 


108      ITALY,  FKANCE  AND  BKITAIN 

anything  except  the  big  Russian  machines.  They 
are  not  at  all  suitable  for  any  present  purpose  upon 
the  Italian  front,  but  at  a  later  stage,  when  the 
German  is  retiring  and  Archibald  no  longer 
searches  the  air,  they  would  be  invaluable  on  the 
western  front  because  of  their  enormous  bomb  or 
machine  gun  carrying  capacity.  "  But  sufficient 
for  the  day  is  the  swat  thereof,"  as  the  British  pub- 
lic schoolboy  says,  and  no  doubt  we  shall  get  them 
when  we  have  sufficiently  felt  the  need  for  them. 
The  big  Caproni  machines  which  the  Italians  pos- 
sess are  of  300  h.p.  and  will  presently  be  of  500  h.p. 
One  gets  up  a  gangway  into  them  as  one  gets  into  a 
yacht;  they  have  a  main  deck,  a  forward  machine 
gun  deck  and  an  aft  machine  gun;  one  may  walk 
about  in  them;  in  addition  to  guns  and  men  they 
carry  a  very  considerable  weight  of  bombs  beneath. 
They  cannot  of  course  get  up  with  the  speed  nor 
soar  to  the  height  of  our  smaller  aeroplanes ;  it  is  as 
carriers  in  raids  behind  a  force  of  fighting  machines 
that  they  should  find  their  use. 

The  British  establishment  I  visited  was  a  very 
refreshing  and  reassuring  piece  of  practical  organi- 
sation. The  air  force  of  Great  Britain  has  had  the 
good  fortune  to  develop  with  considerable  freedom 
from  the  old  army  tradition ;  many  of  its  officers  are 
ex-civil  engineers  and  so  forth;  Headquarters  is  a 
little  shy  of  technical  direction;  and  all  this  in  a 


THE  WAR  LANDSCAPE  109 

service  that  is  still  necessarily  experimental  and 
plastic  is  to  the  good.  There  is  little  doubt  that, 
given  a  release  from  prejudice,  bad  associations  and 
the  equestrian  tradition,  British  technical  intelli- 
gence and  energy  can  do  just  as  well  as  the  French. 
Our  problem  with  our  army  is  not  to  create  in- 
telligence, there  is  an  abundance  of  it,  but  to  re- 
lease it  from  a  dreary  social  and  ofiflcial  pressure. 
The  air  service  ransacks  the  armv  for  men  with 
technical  training  and  sees  that  it  gets  them,  there 
is  a  real  keenness  upon  the  work,  and  the  men  in 
these  great  mobile  hangars  talk  shop  as  readily  and 
clearly  as  Frenchmen  do.  One  met  with  none  of 
that  interest,  real  or  feigned,  in  the  possibility  of 
trout-fishing  or  fox-hunting  behind  the  front  or  in 
playing  with  golf  sticks  and  suchlike  toys,  that  one 
still  meets  here  and  there  (in  spite  of  the  July 
casualty  lists )  among  highly  placed  officers  at  other 
points  in  the  British  front. 

I  have  already  mentioned  and  the  newspapers 
have  told  abundantly  of  the  pluck,  daring,  and  ad- 
mirable work  of  our  aviators;  what  is  still  unten- 
able in  any  detail  is  the  energy  and  ability  of  the 
constructive  and  repairing  branch  upon  whose  effi- 
ciency their  feats  depend.  Perhaps  the  most  in- 
teresting thing  I  saw  in  connection  with  the  air 
work  was  the  hospital  for  damaged  machines  and 
the  dump  to  which  those  hopelessly  injured  are 


110       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

taken,  in  order  that  they  may  be  disarticulated  and 
all  that  is  sound  in  them  used  for  reconstruction. 
How  excellently  this  work  is  being  done  may  be 
judged  from  the  fact  that  our  offensive  in  July 
started  with  a  certain  number  of  aeroplanes,  a  num- 
ber that  would  have  seemed  fantastic  in  a  story  a 
year  before  the  war  began.  These  aeroplanes  were 
in  constant  action;  they  fought,  they  were  shot 
down,  they  had  their  share  of  accidents.  Not  only 
did  the  repair  department  make  good  every  loss,  but 
after  three  weeks  of  the  offensive  the  army  was 
fighting  with  fifty  more  machines  than  at  the  out- 
set. One  goes  through  a  vast  Rembrandtesque  shed 
opening  upon  a  great  sunny  field,  in  whose  cool 
shadows  rest  a  number  of  interesting  patients ;  cap- 
tured and  slightly  damaged  German  machines,  ma- 
chines of  our  own  with  the  scars  of  battle  upon 
them,  one  or  two  cases  of  bad  landing.  The  star 
case  came  from  over  Peronne.  It  had  come  in 
two  days  ago. 

I  examined  this  machine  and  I  will  tell  the  state 
it  was  in,  but  I  perceive  that  what  I  have  to  tell  will 
read  not  like  a  sober  statement  of  truth  but  like 
strained  and  silly  lying.  The  machine  had  had  a 
direct  hit  from  an  Archibald  shell.  The  propeller 
had  been  clean  blown  away ;  so  had  the  machine  gun 
and  all  its  fittings.  The  engines  had  been  stripped 
naked  and  a  good  deal  bent  about.     The  timber  stay 


THE  WAK  LANDSCAPE  111 

over  the  aviator  had  been  broken,  so  that  it  is 
marvellous  the  wings  of  the  machine  did  not  shut 
up  at  once  like  the  wings  of  a  butterfly.  The  soli- 
tary aviator  had  been  wounded  in  the  face.  He  had 
then  come  down  in  a  long  glide  into  the  British 
lines,  and  made  a  tolerable  landing.  .  .  . 


One  consequence  of  the  growing  importance  of 
the  aeroplane  in  warfare  is  the  development  of  a 
new  military  art,  the  art  of  camouflage.  Camou- 
flage is  humbugging  disguise,  it  is  making  things 

—  and  especially  in  this  connection,  military  things 

—  seem  not  what  they  are,  but  something  peaceful 
and  rural,  something  harmless  and  quite  uninter- 
esting to  aeroplane  observers.  It  is  the  art  of  mak- 
ing big  guns  look  like  haystacks  and  tents  like  level 
patches  of  field. 

Also  it  includes  the  art  of  making  attractive 
models  of  guns,  camps,  trenches  and  the  like  that 
are  not  bona-fide  guns,  camps,  or  trenches  at  all,  so 
that  the  aeroplane  bomb-dropper  and  the  aeroplane 
observer  may  waste  his  time  and  energies  and  the 
enemy  gunfire  be  misdirected.  In  Italy  I  saw 
dummy  guns  so  made  as  to  deceive  the  very  elect  at 
a  distance  of  a  few  thousand  feet.  The  camouflage 
of  concealment  aims  either  at  invisibility  or  imita- 


112       ITALY,  FKANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

tion ;  I  have  seen  a  supply  train  look  like  a  row  of 
cottages,  its  smoke-stack  a  cliimney,  with  the  tops 
of  sham-palings  running  along  the  back  line  of  the 
engine  and  creepers  painted  up  its  sides.  But  that 
was  a  flight  of  the  imagination;  the  commonest 
camouflage  is  merely  to  conceal.  Trees  are  brought 
up  and  planted  near  the  object  to  be  hidden,  it  is 
painted  in  the  same  tones  as  its  background,  it  is 
covered  with  an  awning  painted  to  look  like  grass 
or  earth.  I  suppose  it  is  only  a  matter  of  develop- 
ment before  a  dummy  cow  or  so  is  put  up  to  chew 
the  cud  on  the  awning.  The  French  have  a  special 
open  green  fabric  made  of  rushes  which  can  be 
stretched  out  upon  poles  or  the  roofs  of  sheds  with 
extreme  rapidity  and  which  is  remarkably  effective. 
I  saw  none  of  this  on  the  British  front.  But  there 
were  great  rolls  of  it,  van  after  van,  going  up  to  the 
front  on  the  French  side. 

The  French,  being  I  think  on  the  whole  much 
better  acquainted  with  the  commonplaces  of  science 
than  the  senior  British  officers,  have  taken  a  tip 
from  the  colouration  of  animals  in  this  matter.  As 
every  magazine  reader  knows  nowadays,  animal 
colours  even  when  apparently  conspicuous  are  ar- 
ranged almost  always  so  as  to  hrealc  the  outline. 
The  okapi  for  instance,  though  it  is  a  beast  of  white 
and  black,  becomes  inanimate  light  and  shadow  at  a 
few  yards'  distance.    The  French,  grasping  this  idea 


THE  WAR  LANDSCAPE  113 

firmly,  paint  their  tents  and  guns  in  map-like  shapes 
of  strong  green  and  fairly  bright  soil-yellow,  colour- 
ings that  take  them  down  into  the  landscape  at 
a  surprisingly  small  distance.  The  principle  of 
breaking  the  outline  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
fully  grasped  upon  the  British  front.  Much  of  the 
painting  of  guns  and  tents  that  one  sees  is  a  feeble 
and  useless  dabbing  or  striping ;  some  of  the  tents  I 
saw  were  done  in  concentric  bands  or  radiating 
stripes  that  would  on  the  whole  increase  their  visi- 
bility from  above.  In  one  place  I  saw  a  hangar 
painted  a  good  grey-green,  but  surrounded  and  out- 
lined by  spotless  white  tents.  These  things  irri- 
tate a  patriotic  mind  anxious  to  be  proud  of  its 
country  even  in  little  things.  I  wanted  to  get  down 
from  my  automobile  and  talk  very  plainly  and 
simply  and  rudely  to  some  one  upon  the  elements  of 
camouflage  and  the  morality  of  taking  risks  in  war. 
My  impression  —  it  may  be  quite  an  unjust  one  — 
was  that  some  of  our  British  colonels  misunder- 
stand and  dislike  camouflage. 

Let  me,  for  the  purposes  of  illustration,  flash  a 
caricature  upon  the  screen  of  a  certain  Colonel  X. 
of  the  old  school,  w^ho  is  still,  for  want  of  proper 
combing  out,  in  a  position  of  responsibility  at  the 
front.  Let  me  explain  clearly  that  I  have  never 
met  him,  that  I  have  no  one  in  my  mind,  but  that 
here  and  there  I  fancied  I  saw  his  influence.     He  is, 


114       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

you  know,  a  quintessential  army  man,  a  good 
sportsman,  owns  four  thousand  acres,  hunts. 
Never  reads  much  or  any  of  that  rot.  Doesn't  be- 
lieve much  in  any  of  this  modern  stuff.  No.  And 
particularly  he  doesn't  like  camouflage.  He  thinks 
a  gun  should  look  like  a  gun.  He  thinks  a  horse 
should  look  like  a  horse  and  that  a  soldier  or  a  camp 
should  be  "  smart "  before  anything  else.  This 
camouflage  fills  him  with  a  bashful  hostility.  He 
thinks  it  almost  as  objectionable  as  double  entendre. 
It  is  antipathetic  to  his  simple  straightforward 
sporting  tastes.  It  is  as  if  one  handed  over  that 
nice  white  grandstand  at  Epsom  for  decorative  im- 
provement to  Mr.  Roger  Fry.  It  is  like  meeting  a 
pretty  woman  who  turns  out  to  be  clever  and  edu- 
cated and  all  that,  and  says  things  a  man  can't  make 
head  or  tail  of.  .  .  .  At  any  rate  very  many  of  the 
British  tents  look  as  though  they  had  been  dabbed 
over  by  a  protesting  man  muttering  "  foolery  "  as 
he  did  it.  With  a  good  telescope  the  chief  points  of 
interest  in  the  present  British  front  in  France 
would  be  visible  from  Mars.  Happily  the  aerial 
predominance  of  the  Allies  prevents  any  very 
serious  consequences  of  this  queer  little  British 
weakness.  But  the  effect  of  going  from  behind  the 
French  front  to  behind  the  English  is  like  going 
from  a  brooding  wood  of  green  and  blue  into  an 
open  blaze  of  white  canvas  and  khaki. 


THE  WAR  LANDSCAPE  115 

Jt^ut  camouflage  or  no  camouflage,  the  bulk  of 
botli  the  French  and  British  forces  in  the  new  won 
ground  of  the  great  offensive  lay  necessarily  in  the 
oi^en.  Only  the  big  guns  and  the  advanced  Red 
Cross  stations  had  got  into  pits  and  subterranean 
hiding  places.  The  advance  had  been  too  rapid  and 
continuous  for  the  armies  to  make  much  of  a  toilette 
as  they  halted,  and  the  destruction  and  the  deso- 
lation of  the  country  won  afforded  few  facilities 
for  easy  concealment.  Tents,  transport,  munitions, 
these  all  indicated  an  army  on  the  march  —  at  the 
rate  of  half  a  mile  in  a  week  or  so,  to  Germany. 


§  3 

A  journey  up  from  the  base  to  the  front  trenches 
shows  an  interesting  series  of  phases.  One  leaves 
Amiens,  in  which  the  normal  life  threads  its  way 
through  crowds  of  resting  men  in  khaki  and  horizon 
blue,  in  which  staff  officers  in  automobiles  whisk 
hither  and  thither,  in  which  there  are  nurses  and 
even  a  few  inexplicable  ladies  in  worldly  costume, 
in  which  restaurants  and  cafes  are  congested  and 
busy,  through  which  there  is  a  perpetual  coming 
and  going  of  processions  of  heavy  vans  to  the  rail- 
way sidings.  One  dodges  past  a  monstrous  blue- 
black  gun  going  up  to  the  British  front  behind  two 
resolute  traction  engines  —  the  three  sun-blistered 


116       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

young  men  in  the  cart  that  trails  behind  lounge  in 
attitudes  of  haughty  pride  that  would  shame  the 
ceiling  gods  of  Hampton  Court.  One  passes 
through  arcades  of  waiting  motor  vans,  through 
suburbs  still  more  intensely  khaki  or  horizon  blue, 
and  so  out  upon  the  great  straight  poplar-edged 
road  —  to  the  front.  Sometimes  one  laces  through 
spates  of  heavy  traffic,  sometimes  the  dusty  road  is 
clear  ahead,  now  we  pass  a  vast  aviation  camp,  now 
a  park  of  waiting  field  guns,  now  an  encampment  of 
cavalry.  One  turns  aside,  and  abruptly  one  is  In 
France  —  France  as  one  knew  it  before  the  war,  on 
a  shady  secondary  road,  past  a  delightful  chateau 
behind  its  iron  gates,  past  a  beautiful  church,  and 
then  suddenly  w^e  are  in  a  village  street  full  of 
stately  Indian  soldiers. 

It  betrays  no  military  secret  to  say  that  com- 
monly the  rare  tourist  to  the  British  offensive 
passes  through  Albert,  Albert  which  is  at  last  out 
of  range  of  the  German  guns  after  nearly  two 
years  of  tribulation,  with  its  great  modern  red 
cathedral  smashed  to  pieces  and  the  great  gilt  Ma- 
donna and  Child  that  once  surmounted  the  tower 
now,  as  every  one  knows,  hanging  out  horizontally 
over  the  road  in  an  attitude  that  irresistibly  sug- 
gests an  imminent  dive  upon  the  passing  traveller. 
One  looks  right  up  under  it. 

Presently  we  begin  to  see  German  prisoners  upon 


THE  WAK  LANDSCAPE  117 

the  roads  or  in  the  fields,  gangs  of  two  or  three 
hundred  in  their  grey  uniforms,  armed  with  spades, 
pickaxes  and  so  on,  keeping  the  road  in  good  re- 
pair and  working  so  loyally,  I  am  told,  that  they 
work  better  than  the  Tommies  we  put  at  the  same 
job  —  a  good  mark,  I  think,  for  Hans.  The  whole 
lot  look  entirely  contented,  and  are  guarded  by  per- 
haps a  couple  of  men  in  khaki.  These  German  pris- 
oners do  not  attempt  to  escape,  they  have  not  the 
slightest  desire  for  any  more  fighting,  they  have 
done  their  bit,  they  say,  honour  is  satisfied;  they 
give  remarkably  little  trouble.  A  little  way  fur- 
ther on  perhaps  we  pass  their  cage,  a  double 
barbed-wire  enclosure  with  a  few  tents  and  huts 
within. 

A  string  of  covered  waggons  passes  by.  I  turn 
and  see  a  number  of  men  sitting  inside  and  looking 
almost  as  cheerful  as  a  beanfeast  in  Epping  Forest. 
They  make  facetious  gestures.  They  have  a  sub- 
dued sing-song  going  on.  But  one  of  them  looks  a 
little  sick,  and  then  I  notice  not  very  obtrusive 
bandages.     "  Sitting-up  cases,"  my  guide  explains. 

These  are  part  of  the  casualties  of  last  night's 
fight. 

The  fields  on  either  side  are  now  more  evidently 
in  the  war  zone.  The  array  of  carts,  the  patches  of 
tents,  the  coming  and  going  of  men  increases.  But 
here  are  three  women  harvesting,  and  presently  in 


118       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BEITAIN 

a  cornfield  are  German  prisoners  working  under 
one  old  Frenchman.  Then  the  fields  become 
trampled  again.  Here  is  a  village,  not  so  very  much 
knocked  about,  and  passing  through  it  we  go 
slowly  beside  a  long  column  of  men  going  up  to  the 
front.  We  scan  their  collars  for  signs  of  some 
familiar  regiment.  These  are  new  men  going  up 
for  the  first  time ;  there  is  a  sort  of  solemn  elation 
in  many  of  their  faces. 

The  men  coming  down  are  usually  smothered  in 
mud  or  dust,  and  unless  there  has  been  a  fight  they 
look  pretty  well  done  up.  They  stoop  under  their 
equipment,  and  some  of  the  youngsters  drag.  One 
pleasant  thing  about  this  coming  down  is  the  wel- 
come of  the  regimental  band,  which  is  usually  at 
work  as  soon  as  the  men  turn  off  from  the  high  road. 
I  hear  several  bands  on  the  British  front;  they  do 
much  to  enhance  the  general  cheerfulness.  On  one 
of  these  days  of  my  tour  I  had  the  pleasure  of 
seeing  the  — th  Blankshires  coming  down  after  a 
fight.  As  we  drew  near  I  saw  that  they  combined 
an  extreme  muddiness  with  an  unusual  elasticity. 
They  all  seemed  to  be  looking  us  in  the  face  instead 
of  being  too  fagged  to  bother.  Then  I  noticed  a 
nice  grey  helmet  dangling  from  one  youngster's 
bayonet,  in  fact  his  eye  directed  me  to  it.  A  man 
behind  him  had  a  black  German  helmet  of  the  type 
best  known  in  English  illustrations ;  then  two  more 


THE  WAR  LANDSCAPE  119 

grey  appeared.  The  catch  of  helmets  had  indeed 
been  quite  considerable.  Then  I  perceived  on  the 
road  bank  above  and  marching  parallel  with  this 
column,  a  double  file  of  still  muddier  Germans. 
Either  they  wore  caps  or  went  bareheaded.  There 
were  no  helmets  among  them.  We  do  not  rob  our 
prisoners  but  —  a  helmet  is  a  weapon.  Anyhow,  it 
is  an  irresistible  souvenir. 

Now  and  then  one  sees  afar  on  an  ammunition 
dump,  many  hundreds  of  stacks  of  shells  —  without 
their  detonators  as  yet  —  being  unloaded  from  rail- 
way trucks,  transferred  from  the  broad  gauge  to 
the  narrow  gauge  line,  or  loaded  into  motor  trolleys. 
Now  and  then  one  crosses  a  railway  line.  The 
railway  lines  run  everywhere  now  behind  the 
British  front,  the  construction  follows  the  advance 
day  by  day.  They  go  up  as  fast  as  the  guns.  One's 
guide  remarks  as  the  car  bumps  over  the  level  cross- 
ing, "That  is  one  of  Haig's  railways."  It  is  an 
aspect  of  the  Commander-in-Chief  that  has  much 
impressed  and  pleased  the  men.  And  at  last  we  be- 
gin to  enter  the  region  of  the  former  Allied 
trenches,  w^e  pass  the  old  German  front  line,  we 
pass  ruined  houses,  ruined  fields,  and  thick  patches 
of  clustering  wooden  crosses  and  boards  where  the 
dead  of  the  opening  assaults  lie.  There  are  no 
more  reapers  now,  there  is  no  more  green  upon  the 
fields,  there  is  no  green  anywhere,  scarcely  a  tree 


120       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

survives  by  the  roadside,  but  only  overthrown 
trunks  and  splintered  stumps ;  the  fields  are  wilder- 
nesses of  shell  craters  and  coarse  weeds,  the  very 
woods  are  collections  of  blasted  stems  and  stripped 
branches.  This  absolutely  ravaged  and  ruined  bat- 
tlefield country  extends  now  along  the  front  of  the 
Somme  offensive  for  a  depth  of  many  miles ;  across 
it  the  French  and  British  camps  and  batteries  creep 
forward,  the  stores,  the  dumps,  the  raihvays  creep 
forw^ard,  in  their  untiring,  victorious  thrust  against 
the  German  lines.  Overhead  hum  and  roar  the 
aeroplanes,  away  towards  the  enemy  and  humped, 
blue  sausage-shaped  kite  balloons  brood  thought- 
fully, and  from  this  point  and  that,  guns,  curiously 
invisible  until  they  speak,  flash  suddenly  and  strike 
their  one  short  hammer-blow  of  sound. 

Then  one  sees  an  enemy  shell  drop  among  the  lit- 
tle patch  of  trees  on  the  crest  to  the  right,  and  kick 
up  a  great  red-black  mass  of  smoke  and  dust.  We 
see  it,  and  then  we  hear  the  w' hine  of  its  arrival  and 
at  last  the  bang.  The  Germans  are  blind  now,  they 
have  lost  the  air,  they  are  firing  by  guesswork,  and 
their  knowledge  of  the  abandoned  territory. 

"  They  think  they  have  got  divisional  headquar- 
ters there,"  some  one  remarks.  ..."  They 
haven't.     But  they  keep  on." 

In  this  zone  where  shells  burst  the  wise  auto- 
mobile stops  and  tucks  itself  away  as  inconspicu- 


THE  WAR  LANDSCAPE  121 

ously  as  possible  close  up  to  a  heap  of  ruins.  There 
is  very  little  traffic  on  the  road  now  except  for  a 
van  or  so  that  hurries  up,  unloads,  and  gets  back  as 
soon  as  possible.  Mules  and  men  are  taking  the 
stuff  the  rest  of  the  journey.  We  are  in  a  flattened 
village,  all  undermined  by  dug-outs  that  were  in  the 
original  German  second  line.  We  report  ourselves 
to  a  young  Troglodyte  in  one  of  these,  and  are  given 
a  guide,  and  so  set  out  on  the  last  part  of  the  journey 
to  the  ultimate  point,  across  the  land  of  shell  craters 
and  barbed  wire  litter  and  old  and  new  trenches. 
We  have  all  put  on  British  steel  helmets,  hard  but 
heavy  and  inelegant  head  coverings.  I  can  write 
little  that  is  printable  about  these  aesthetic  crimes. 
The  French  and  German  helmets  are  noble  and 
beautiful  things.     These  lumpish  pans  .  .  . 

They  ought  to  be  called  by  the  name  of  the  man 
who  designed  them. 

Presently  we  are  advised  to  get  into  a  communi- 
cation trench.  It  is  not  a  very  attractive  communi- 
cation trench,  and  we  stick  to  our  track  across  the 
open.  Three  or  four  shells  shiver  overhead,  but  we 
decide  they  are  British  shells,  going  out.  We 
reach  a  supporting  trench  in  which  men  are  waiting 
in  a  state  of  nearly  insupportable  boredom  for  the 
midday  stew,  the  one  event  of  interest  in  a  day-long 
vigil.  Here  we  are  told  imperatively  to  come  right 
in  at  once,  and  we  do. 


122       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

All  communication  trenches  are  tortuous  and 
practically  endless.  On  an  offensive  front  they 
have  vertical  sides  of  unsupported  earth  and  occa- 
sional soakaways  for  rain  covered  by  wooden  grat- 
ings, and  they  go  on  and  on  and  on.  At  rare  inter- 
vals they  branch,  and  a  notice  board  says  "  To  Re- 
gent Street,"  or  "  To  Oxford  Street,"  or  some  such 
lie.  It  is  all  just  trench.  For  a  time  you  talk,  but 
talking  in  single  file  soon  palls.  You  cease  to  talk, 
and  trudge.  A  great  number  of  telephone  wires 
come  into  the  trench  and  cross  and  recross  it. 
You  cannot  keep  clear  of  them.  Your  helmet  pings 
against  them  and  they  try  to  remove  it.  Some- 
times you  have  to  stop  and  crawl  under  wires. 
Then  you  wonder  what  the  trench  is  like  in  really 
wet  weather.  You  hear  a  shell  burst  at  no  great 
distance.  You  pass  two  pages  of  The  Strand  Maga- 
zine. Perhaps  thirty  yards  on  you  pass  a  cigarette 
end.  After  these  sensational  incidents  the  trench 
quiets  down  again  and  continues  to  wind  endlessly 
—  just  a  wiry,  sandy,  extremely  narrow  trench.  A 
giant  crack. 

At  last  you  reach  the  front  line  trench.  On  an 
offensive  ■hk^cX/  it  has  none  of  the  architectural  in- 
terest of  first  line  trenches  at  such  places  as  Sois- 
sons  or  Arras.  It  was  made  a  week  or  so  ago  by 
joining  up  shell  craters,  and  if  all  goes  well  we 
move  into  the  German  trench  along  by  the  line  of 


THE  WAK  LANDSCAPE  123 

scraggy  trees,  at  which  we  peep  discreetly,  to-mor- 
row night.  We  can  peep  discreetly  because  just  at 
present  our  guns  are  putting  shrapnel  over  the 
enemy  at  the  rate  of  about  three  shells  a  minute,  the 
puffs  follow  each  other  up  and  down  the  line,  and 
no  Germans  are  staring  about  to  see  us. 

The  Germans  "  strafed "  this  trench  overnight, 
and  the  men  are  tired  and  sleepy.  Our  guns  away 
behind  us  are  doing  their  best  now  to  give  them  a 
rest  by  strafing  the  Germans.  One  or  two  men  are 
in  each  forward  sap  keeping  a  lookout;  the  rest 
sleep,  a  motionless  sleep,  in  the  earthy  shelter  pits 
that  have  been  scooped  out.  One  officer  sits  by  a 
telephone  under  an  earth-covered  tarpauling,  and 
a  weary  man  is  doing  the  toilette  of  a  machine  gun. 
We  go  on  to  a  shallow  trench  in  which  we  must 
stoop,  and  which  has  been  badly  knocked 
about.  .  .  .  Here  we  have  to  stop.  The  road  to 
Berlin  is  not  opened  up  beyond  this  point. 

My  companion  on  this  excursion  is  a  man  I  have 
admired  for  years  and  never  met  before  until  I 
came  out  to  see  the  war.  Captain  C.  E.  Montague, 
author  of  a  book  called  A  Hind  Let  Loose.  He  is 
a  journalist  let  loose.  Two-thirds  of  the  junior 
British  officers  I  met  on  this  journey  were  really 
not  "  army  men  "  at  all.  One  has  none  of  that  feel- 
ing of  having  to  deal  with  a  highly  specialised  mind 
that  made  the  old  sort  of  officer  such  uncomfortable 


124       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

company  for  a  discursive  talker.  They  knew  of 
nothing  but  about  a  few  of  the  more  popular 
theatres  and  about  music  halls  and  about  people's 
relations.  They  had  read  a  certain  number  of 
novels,  but  had  either  forgotten  or  never  observed 
the  titles.  They  thought  philosophy,  history,  art 
or  religion  "  a  bit  too  deep  "  for  them.  This  tradi- 
tion survives  now  only  on  the  staffs.  Now  one 
finds  that  the  apparent  subaltern  is  really  a  musi- 
cian, or  a  musical  critic,  or  an  Egyptologist,  or  a 
solicitor,  or  a  cloth  manufacturer,  or  a  writer.  At 
the  outbreak  of  the  war  my  companion  dyed  his 
hair  to  conceal  its  tell-tale  silver,  and  having  been 
laughed  to  scorn  by  the  ordinary  recruiting  people, 
enlisted  in  the  sportsmen's  battalion.  He  was 
wounded,  and  then  the  authorities  discovered  that 
he  was  likely  to  be  of  more  use  with  a  commission 
and  drew  him,  in  spite  o|f  considerable  resistance, 
out  of  the  firing  line.  To  which  he  always  returns 
whenever  he  can  get  a  visitor  to  take  with  him  as  an 
excuse.  He  now  stood  up,  fairly  high  and  clear, 
explaining  casually  that  the  Germans  w^ere  no 
longer  firing,  and  showed  me  the  points  of  interest. 

I  had  come  right  up  to  No  Man's  Land  at  last. 
It  was  under  my  chin.  The  skyline,  the  last  sky- 
line before  the  British  could  look  down  on 
Bapaume,  showed  a  mangey  wood  and  a  ruined  vil- 


THE  WAR  LANDSCAPE  125 

lage,  crouching  under  repeated  gobbings  of  British 
shrapnel.  "  They've  got  a  battery  just  there,  and 
we're  making  it  uncomfortable."  No  Man's  Land 
itself  is  a  weedy  sj^ace  broken  up  by  shell  craters, 
with  very  little  barbed  wire  in  front  of  us  and  very 
little  in  front  of  the  Germans.  "  They've  got 
snipers  in  most  of  the  craters,  and  you  see  them  at 
twilight  hopping  about  from  one  to  the  other." 
We  have  very  little  wire  because  we  don't  mean  to 
stay  for  very  long  in  this  trench,  and  the  Germans 
have  very  little  wire  because  they  have  not  been 
able  to  get  it  up  yet.  They  never  will  get  it  up 
now.  .  .  . 

I  had  been  led  to  believe  that  No  Man's  Land  was 
littered  with  the  unburied  dead,  but  I  saw  nothing 
of  the  sort  at  this  place.  There  had  been  no  Ger- 
man counter  attack  since  our  men  came  up  here. 
But  at  one  point  as  we  went  along  the  trench  there 
was  a  dull  stench.  "  Germans,  I  think,"  said  my 
guide,  though  I  do  not  see  how  he  could  tell. 

He  looked  at  his  watch  and  remarked  reluctantly, 
"  If  you  start  at  once,  you  may  just  do  it." 

I  wanted  to  catch  the  Boulogne  boat.  It  was 
then  just  past  one  in  the  afternoon.  We  met  the 
stew  as  we  returned  along  the  communication 
trench,  and  it  smelt  very  good  indeed.  .  .  .  We 
hurried  across  the  great  spaces  of  rusty  desolation 


126       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

upon  which  every  now  and  again  a  German  shell 
was  bursting.  .  .  . 

That  night  I  was  in  my  flat  in  London.  I  had 
finished  reading  the  accumulated  letters  of  some 
weeks,  and  I  was  just  going  comfortably  to  bed. 


ly 


NEW  ARMS  FOR  OLD  ONES 

» 


Such  are  the  landscapes  and  method  of  modern 
war.  It  is  more  different  in  its  nature  from  war  as 
it  was  waged  in  the  nineteenth  century  than  that 
was  from  the  nature  of  the  phalanx  or  the  legion. 
The  nucleus  fact  —  when  I  talked  to  General  Joff re 
he  was  very  insistent  upon  this  point  —  is  still  as 
ever  the  ordinary  fighting  man,  but  all  the  acces- 
sories and  conditions  of  his  personal  encounter  with 
the  fighting  man  of  the  other  side  have  been  revolu- 
tionised in  a  quarter  of  a  century.  The  fighting 
together  in  a  close  disciplined  order,  shoulder  to 
shoulder,  which  has  held  good  for  thousands  of 
years  as  the  best  and  most  successful  fighting,  has 
been  destroyed;  the  idea  of  hreaking  infantry 
formation  as  the  chief  offensive  operation  has  dis- 
appeared, the  cavalry  charge  and  the  cavalry  pur- 
suit are  as  obsolete  as  the  cross-bow.  The  modern 
fighting  man  is  as  individualised  as  a  half  back  or  a 
centre  forward  in  a  football  team.  Personal  fight- 
ing has  become  "  scrapping  "  again,  an  individual 

127 


128       ITALY,  FEANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

adventure  with  knife,  club,  bomb,  revolver  or  bay- 
onet. In  this  war  we  are  working  out  things  in- 
stead of  thinking  them  out,  and  these  enormous 
changes  are  still  but  imperfectly  apprehended.  The 
trained  and  specialised  military  man  probably  ap- 
prehends them  as  feebly  as  any  one. ' 

This  is  a  thing  that  I  want  to  state  as  emphati- 
cally as  possible.  It  is  the  quintessence  of  the  les- 
son I  have  learnt  at  the  front.  The  whole  method 
of  war  has  been  so  altered  in  the  past  five  and 
twenty  years  as  to  make  it  a  new  and  different  proc- 
ess altogether.  Much  the  larger  part  of  this  altera- 
tion has  only  become  effective  in  the  last  two  years. 
Every  one  is  a  beginner  at  this  new  game ;  every  one 
is  experimenting  and  learning.  The  former  train- 
ing of  the  soldier,  the  established  traditions  of  mili- 
tary ways,  the  mental  habits  of  what  we  call  in  Eng- 
land "  army  people  "  no  more  fit  them  specially  for 
this  new  game  than  any  other  sort  of  training.  In 
so  far  as  that  former  training  suppressed  thought ; 
in  so  far  as  the  army  tradition  has  given  army  peo- 
ple a  disposition  to  assume  that  they  are  specially 
qualified  for  any  sort  of  war,  so  far  is  their  profes- 
sionalism a  positive  disadvantage.  The  business 
organiser,  the  civil  engineer,  the  energetic  man  of 
general  intelligence  is  just  as  likely  to  make  a  suc- 
cessful commander  at  this  new  warfare  as  a  man  of 
the  old  army  class.     This  is  not,  I  think,  realised 


NEW  ARMS  FOE  OLD  ONES  129 

as  yet  by  the  British  as  clearly  as  it  is  by  the 
French.  But  it  has  been  said  admirably  by  Punch. 
That  excellent  picture  of  the  old-fashioned  sergeant 
who  complains  to  his  officer  of  the  new  recruit: 
"  'E's  all  right  in  the  trenches,  Sir ;  'e's  all  right  at 
a  scrap ;  but  'e  won't  never  make  a  soldier,"  is  the 
quintessence  of  everything  I  am  saying  here.  And 
was  there  not  the  very  gravest  doubts  about  General 
Smuts  in  British  military  circles  because  he  had 
"  had  no  military  training  "? 

The  professional  officer  of  the  old  dispensation 
was  a  man  specialised  in  relation  to  some  one  of  the 
established  "  arms."  He  w^as  an  infantry-man,  a 
cavalry  man,  a  gunner  or  an  engineer.  It  will  be 
interesting  to  trace  the  changes  that  have  happened 
to  all  these  arms. 

Before  this  war  began  speculative  writers  had 
argued  that  infantry  drill  in  close  formation  had 
now  no  fighting  value  whatever,  that  it  was  no  doubt 
extremely  necessary  for  the  handling,  packing,  for- 
warding and  distribution  of  men,  but  that  the  ideal 
infantry  fighter  was  now  a  highly  individualised 
and  self-reliant  man  put  into  a  pit  with  a  machine 
gun,  and  supported  by  a  string  of  other  men  bring- 
ing him  up  supplies  and  ready  to  assist  him  in  any 
forward  rush  that  might  be  necessary. 

The  opening  phases  of  the  war  seemed  to  contra- 
dict this.     It  did  not  at  first  suit  the  German  game 


130       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

to  fight  on  this  most  modern  theoi^,  and  isolated  in- 
dividual action  is  uncongenial  to  the  ordinary  Ger- 
man temperament  and  opposed  to  the  organised 
social  tendencies  of  German  life.  To  this  day  the 
Germans  attack  chiefly  in  close  order ;  they  are  un- 
able to  produce  a  real  modern  infantry  for  aggres- 
sive purposes,  and  it  is  a  matter  of  astonishment 
to  military  minds  on  the  English  side  that  our 
hastily  trained  new  armies  should  turn  out  to  be 
just  as  good  at  the  new  fighting  as  the  most  "  sea- 
soned troops."  But  there  is  no  reason  whatever 
why  they  should  not  be.  "  Leading,"  in  the  sense 
of  going  ahead  of  the  men  and  making  them  move 
about  mechanically  at  the  word  of  command,  has 
ceased.  On  the  British  side  our  magnificent  new 
subalterns  and  our  equally  magnificent  new  non- 
commissioned officers  play  the  part  of  captains  of 
football  teams;  they  talk  their  men  individually 
into  an  understanding  of  the  job  before  them ;  they 
criticise  style  and  performance.  On  the  French 
side  things  have  gone  even  farther.  Every  man  in 
certain  attacks  has  been  given  a  large  scale  map  of 
the  ground  over  which  he  has  to  go,  and  has  had  his 
own  individual  job  clearly  marked  and  explained 
to  him.  All  the  Allied  infantrymen  tend  to  be- 
come specialised,  as  bombers,  as  machine  gun  men, 
and  so  on.  The  unspecialised  common  soldier,  the 
infantry   man  who   has  stood   and  marched  and 


NEW  ARMS  FOR  OLD  ONES  131 

moved  in  ranks  and  ranks,  the  "  serried  lines  of 
men,"  who  are  the  main  substance  of  every  battle 
story  for  the  last  three  thousand  years,  are  as  obso- 
lete as  the  dodo.  The  rifle  and  bayonet  very  prob- 
ably are  becoming  obsolete  too.  Knives  and  clubs 
and  revolvers  serve  better  in  the  trenches.  The 
krees  and  the  Roman  sword  would  be  as  useful. 
The  fine  flourish  of  the  bayonet  is  only  possible  in 
the  rare  infrequent  open.  Even  then  the  Zulu 
assegai  would  serve  as  well. 

The  two  operations  of  the  infantry  attack  now 
are  the  rush  and  the  "scrap."  These  come  after 
the  artillery  preparation.  Against  the  rush,  the 
machine  gun  is  pitted.  The  machine  gun  becomes 
lighter  and  more  and  more  controllable  by  one 
man ;  as  it  does  so  the  days  of  the  rifle  draw  to  a 
close.  Against  the  machine  gun  we  are  now  direct- 
ing the  "  Tank,"  which  goes  ahead  and  puts  out 
the  machine  gun  as  soon  as  it  begins  to  sting  the  in- 
fantry rush.  We  are  also  using  the  swooping  aero- 
plane with  a  machine  gun.  Both  these  devices  are 
of  British  origin,  and  they  promise  very  well. 

After  the  rush  and  the  scrap  comes  the  organisa- 
tion of  the  captured  trench.  "  Digging  in  "  com-' 
pletes  the  cycle  of  modern  infantry  fighting.  You 
may  consider  this  the  first  or  the  last  phase  of  an 
infantry  operation.  It  is  probably  at  present  the 
least  worked-out  part  of  the  entire  cycle.     Here 


132       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

lies  the  sole  German  superiority;  they  bunch  and 
crowd  in  the  rush,  they  are  inferior  at  the  scrap,  but 
they  do  dig  like  moles.  The  weakness  of  the  British 
is  their  failure  to  settle  down.  They  like  the  rush 
and  the  scrap;  they  i)ress  on  too  far,  they  get  out- 
flanked and  lost  "  in  the  blue  " ;  they  are  not  nat- 
urally clever  at  the  excavating  part  of  the  work, 
and  they  are  not  as  yet  well-trained  in  making  dug- 
outs and  shelter-pits  rapidly  and  intelligently. 
They  display  most  of  the  faults  that  were  supposed 
to  be  most  distinctively  French  before  this  war 
came  to  revolutionise  all  our  conceptions  of  French 
character. 


Now  the  operations  of  this  modern  infantry, 
which  unlike  any  preceding  infantry  in  the  history 
of  war  does  not  fight  in  disciplined  formations  but 
as  highly  individualised  specialists,  are  determined 
almost  completely  by  the  artillery  preparation. 
Artillery  is  now  the  most  essential  instrument  of 
war.  You  may  still  get  along  with  rather  bad  in- 
fantry ;  you  may  still  hold  out  even  after  the  loss  of 
the  aerial  ascendency,  but  so  soon  as  your  guns  fail 
you  approach  defeat.  The  backbone  process  of  the 
whole  art  of  war  is  the  manufacture  in  overwhelm- 
ing quantities,  the  carriage  and  delivery  of  shell 
upon  the  vulnerable  points  of  the  enemy's  positions. 


NEW  ARMS  FOR  OLD  ONES  133 

That  is,  so  to  speak,  the  essential  blow.  Even  the 
infantry  man  is  now  hardly  more  than  the  residuary 
legatee  after  the  gims  have  taken  their  toll. 

I  have  now  followed  nearly  every  phase  in  the 
life  history  of  a  shell  from  the  moment  when  it  is  a 
segment  of  steel  bar  just  cut  off,  to  the  moment 
when  it  is  no  more  than  a  few  dispersed  and  rusting 
rags  and  fragments  of  steel  —  pressed  upon  the 
stray  visitor  to  the  battlefield  as  souvenirs.  All 
good  factories  are  intensely  interesting  places  to 
visit,  but  a  good  munition  factory  is  romantically 
satisfactory.  It  is  as  nearly  free  from  the  antag- 
onism of  employer  and  employed  as  any  factory 
can  be.  The  busy  sheds  I  visited  near  Paris  struck 
me  as  being  the  most  living  and  active  things  in  the 
entire  war  machine.  Everywhere  else  I  saw  fitful 
activity,  or  men  waiting.  I  have  seen  more  men 
sitting  about  and  standing  about,  more  bored  in- 
activity, during  my  tour  than  I  have  ever  seen  be- 
fore in  my  life.  Even  the  front  line  trenches  seem 
to  slumber ;  the  Angel  of  Death  drowses  over  them, 
and  moves  in  his  sleep  to  crush  out  men's  lives. 
The  gunfire  has  an  indolent  intermittance.  But  the 
munition  factories  grind  on  night  and  day,  grind- 
ing against  the  factories  in  Central  Europe,  grind- 
ing out  the  slow  and  costly  and  necessary  victory 
that  may  end  aggressive  warfare  in  the  world  for 
ever. 


134       ITALY,  FKANCE  AND  BEITAIN 

It  would  be  very  interesting  if  one  could  arrange 
a  meeting  between  any  typical  Allied  munition 
maker  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  Kaiser  and  Hinden- 
burg,  those  two  dominant  effigies  in  the  German  na- 
tionalists' dream  of  "  world  might."  Or  failing 
that,  Mr.  Dyson  might  draw  the  encounter.  You 
imagine  these  two  heroic  figures  got  up  for  the  in- 
terview, very  magnificent  in  shining  helms  and 
flowing  cloaks,  decorations,  splendid  swords,  spurs. 
"  Here,"  one  would  say,  "  is  the  power  that  has 
held  you.  You  were  bolstered  up  very  loyally  by 
the  Krupp  firm  and  so  forth,  you  piled  up  shell, 
guns,  war  material,  you  hoped  to  snatch  your  vic- 
tory before  the  industrialism  and  invention  of  the 
world  could  turn  upon  you.  But  you  failed.  You 
were  not  rapid  enough.  The  battle  of  the  Marne 
was  your  misfortune.  And  Y^pres.  You  lost  some 
chances  at  Y^pres.  Two  can  play  at  destructive  in- 
dustrialism, and  now  we  out-gun  you.  We  are  pil- 
ing up  munitions  now  faster  than  you.  The  essen- 
tials of  this  Game  of  the  War  Lord  are  idiotically 
simple,  but  it  was  not  of  our  choosing.  It  is  now 
merely  a  question  of  months  before  you  make  your 
inevitable  admission.  This  gentleman  in  the 
bowler  hat  is  the  victor.  Sire;  not  you.  Assisted, 
Sire,  by  these  disrespectful-looking  factory  girls  in 
overalls." 

For  example,  there  is  M.  Citroen.     Before  the 


NEW  ARMS  FOR  OLD  ONES  135 

war  I  understand  he  made  automobiles;  after  the 
war  he  wants  to  turn  to  and  make  automobiles 
again.  For  the  duration  of  the  war  he  makes  shell. 
He  has  been  temporarily  diverted  from  constructive 
to  destructive  industrialism.  He  did  me  the  hon- 
ours of  his  factory.  He  is  a  compact,  active  man  in 
dark  clothes  and  a  bowler  hat,  with  a  pencil  and 
notebook  conveniently  at  hand.  He  talked  to  me 
in  carefully  easy  French,  and  watched  my  face  with 
an  intelligent  eye  through  his  pince-nez  for  the  signs 
of  comprehension.  Then  he  went  on  to  the  next 
point. 

He  took  me  through  every  stage  of  his  process. 
In  his  office  he  showed  me  the  general  story.  Here 
were  photograi)hs  of  certain  vacant  fields  and  old 
sheds  — "  this  place  " —  he  indicated  the  altered 
prospect  from  the  window  — "  at  the  outbreak  of  the 
war."  He  showed  me  a  plan  of  the  first  under- 
taking. "  Now  we  have  rather  over  nine  thousand 
work-people." 

He  showed  me  a  little  row  of  specimens.  "  These 
we  make  for  Italy.  These  go  to  Russia.  These 
are  the  Rumanian  pattern." 

Thence  to  the  first  stage,  the  chopping  up  of  the 
iron  bars,  the  furnace,  the  punching  out  of  the  first 
shape  of  the  shell;  all  this  is  men's  work.  I  had 
seen  this  sort  of  thing  before  in  peace  ironworks, 
but  I  saw  it  again  with  the  same  astonisliment,  the 


136       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

absolute  precision  of  movement  on  the  part  of  the 
half-naked  sweating  men,  the  calculated  eflSciency 
of  each  worker,  the  apparent  heedlessness,  the  real 
certitude,  with  which  the  blazing  hot  cylinder  is 
put  here,  dropped  there,  rolls  to  its  next  appointed 
spot,  is  chopped  up  and  handed  on,  the  swift  passage 
to  the  cooling  crude,  pinkish-purple  shell  shape. 
Down  a  long  line  one  sees  in  perspective  a  practical 
symmetry,  of  furnace  and  machine  group  and  the 
shells  marching  on  from  this  first  series  of  phases  to 
undergo  the  long  succession  of  operations,  machine 
after  machine,  across  the  great  width  of  the  shed 
in  which  eighty  per  cent,  of  the  workers  are  women. 
There  is  a  thick  dust  of  sounds  in  the  air,  a  rumble 
of  shafting,  sudden  thuddings,  clankings,  and  M. 
Citroen  has  to  raise  his  voice.  He  points  out  where 
he  has  made  little  changes  in  procedure,  cut  out 
some  wasteful  movement.  ...  He  has  an  idea  and 
makes  a  note  in  the  ever-ready  notebook. 

There  is  beauty  about  all  these  women,  there  is 
extraordinary  grace  in  their  finely  adjusted  move- 
ments. I  have  come  from  an  after-lunch  coffee 
upon  the  boulevards  and  from  watching  the  ugly 
fashion  of  our  time ;  it  is  a  relief  to  be  reminded  that 
most  women  can  after  all  be  beautiful  —  if  only 
they  would  not "  dress."  These  women  wear  simple 
overalls  and  caps.  In  the  cap  is  a  rosette.  Each 
shed  has  its  own  colour  of  rosette. 


NEW  ARMS  FOR  OLD  ONES  137 

"There  is  much  esprit  de  corps  here,"  says  M. 
Citroen. 

"  And  also,"  he  adds,  showing  obverse  as  well  as 
reverse  of  the  world's  problem  of  employment  and 
discipline,  "  we  can  see  at  once  if  a  woman  is  not 
in  her  proper  shed." 

Across  the  great  sheds  under  the  shafting  —  how 
fine  it  must  look  at  night !  —  the  shells  march,  are 
shaped,  cut,  fitted  with  copper  bands,  calibrated, 
polished,  varnished.  .  .  . 

Then  we  go  on  to  another  system  of  machines  in 
which  lead  is  reduced  to  plastic  ribbons  and  cut 
into  shrapnel  bullets  as  the  sweetstuff  makers  pull 
out  and  cut  up  sweetstuff.  And  thence  into  a  war- 
ren of  hot  underground  passages  in  w^hich  run  the 
power  cables.  There  is  not  a  cable  in  the  place 
that  is  not  immediately  accessible  to  the  electri- 
cians. We  visit  the  dynamos  and  a  vast  organisa- 
tion of  switchboards.  .  .  . 

These  things  are  more  familiar  to  M.  Citroen 
than  they  are  to  me.  He  wants  me  to  understand, 
but  he  does  not  realise  that  I  would  like  a  little 
leisure  to  wonder.  What  is  interesting  him  just 
now,  because  it  is  the  newest  thing,  is  his  method 
of  paying  his  workers.  He  lifts  a  hand  very 
gravely :  "  I  said,  what  we  must  do  is  to  abolish 
altogether  the  counting  of  change." 

At  a  certain  hour,  he  explained,  came  paytime. 


138       ITALY,  FBANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

The  people  had  done;  it  was  to  his  interest  and 
theirs  that  they  should  get  out  of  the  works  as 
quickly  as  possible  and  rest  and  amuse  themselves. 
He  watched  them  standing  in  queues  at  the  wickets 
while  inside  some  one  counted ;  so  manv  francs,  so 
many  centimes.  It  bored  him  to  see  this  useless, 
tiresome  waiting.  It  is  abolished.  Now  at  the 
end  of  each  week  the  worker  goes  to  a  window  under 
the  initial  of  his  name,  and  is  handed  a  card  on 
which  these  items  have  been  entered : 

Balance  from  last  week. 

So  many  hours  at  so  much. 

Premiums. 
The  total  is  so  many  francs,  so  many  centimes. 
This  is  divided  into  the  nearest  round  number,  100, 
120,  80  francs  as  the  case  may  be,  and  a  balance  of 
the  odd  francs  and  centimes.  The  latter  is  car- 
ried forward  to  the  next  week's  account.  At  the 
bottom  of  the  card  is  a  tear-off  coupon  with  a 
stamp,  coloured  to  indicate  the  round  sum,  green, 
let  us  say,  for  100,  blue  for  130  francs.  This  is 
taken  to  a  wicket  marked  100  or  130  as  the  case 
may  be,  and  there  stands  a  cashier  with  his  money 
in  piles  of  100  or  130  francs  counted  ready  to  hand ; 
he  sweeps  in  the  coupon,  sweeps  out  the  cash. 

I  became  interested  in  the  worker's  side  of  this 
organisation.     I  insist  on  seeing  the  entrances,  the 


NEW  ARMS  FOR  OLD  ONES  139 

clothes-changing  places,  the  lavatories,  and  so  forth 
of  the  organisation.  As  we  go  about  we  pass  a 
string  of  electric  trolleys  steered  by  important- 
looking  girls,  and  loaded  with  shell,  finished  as  far 
as  these  works  are  concerned  and  on  their  way  to 
the  railway  siding.  We  visit  the  hospital,  for  these 
works  demand  a  medical  staff.  It  is  not  only  that 
men  and  women  faint  or  fall  ill,  but  there  are  acci- 
dents, burns,  crushings,  and  the  like.  The  war 
casualties  begin  already  here,  and  they  fall  chiefly 
among  the  women.  I  saw  a  wounded  woman  with 
a  bandaged  face  sitting  very  quietly  in  the  corner. 
The  women  here  face  danger,  perhaps  not  quite 
such  obvious  danger  as  the  women  who,  at  the  next 
stage  in  the  shell's  career,  make  and  pack  the  ex- 
plosives in  their  silk  casing,  but  quite  considerable 
risk.  And  they  work  with  a  real  enthusiasm. 
They  know  they  are  fighting  the  Boches  as  well  as 
any  men.  Certain  of  them  wear  Russian  decora- 
tions. The  women  of  this  particular  factory  have 
been  thanked  by  the  Tsar,  and  a  number  of  decora- 
tions were  sent  by  him  for  distribution  among  them. 


§  3 

The  shell  factory  and  the  explosives  shed  stand 
level  with  the  drill  yard  as  the  real  first  stage  in  one 
of    the    two    essential    punches    in    modern    war. 


140       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

When  one  meets  the  shell  again  it  is  being  unloaded 
from  the  railway  truck  into  an  ammunition  dump. 
And  here  the  work  of  control  is  much  more  the  work 
of  a  good  traffic  manager  than  of  the  old-fashioned 
soldier. 

The  dump  I  best  remember  I  visited  on  a  wet  and 
rainy  day.  Over  a  great  space  of  ground  the  sid- 
ings of  the  rail-head  spread,  the  normal  gauge  rail- 
head spread  out  like  a  fan  and  interdigitated  with 
the  narrow  gauge  lines  that  go  up  practically  to  the 
guns.  And  also  at  the  sides  camions  were  loading, 
and  an  officer  from  the  Midi  in  charge  of  one  of 
these  was  being  dramatically  indignant  at  five  min- 
utes' delay.  Between  these  two  sets  of  lines,  shells 
were  piled  of  all  sizes,  I  should  think  some  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  shells  altogether,  wet  and  shining  in 
the  rain.  French  reservists,  soldiers  from  Mada- 
gascar, and  some  Senegalese  were  busy  at  different 
points  loading  and  unloading  the  precious  freights. 
A  little  way  away  from  me  were  despondent-look- 
ing German  prisoners  handling  timber.  All  this 
dump  was  no  more  than  an  eddy  as  it  were  in  the 
path  of  the  shell  from  its  birth  from  the  steel  bars 
near  Paris  to  the  accomplishment  of  its  destiny  in 
the  destruction  or  capture  of  more  Germans. 

And  next  the  visitor  meets  the  shell  coming  up 
upon  a  little  trolley  to  the  gun.  He  sees  the  gun- 
ners, as  drilled  and  precise  as  the  men  he  saw  at  the 


NEW  AKMS  FOR  OLD  ONES  141 

forges,  swing  out  the  breech  "block  and  run  the  shell, 
which  has  met  and  combined  with  its  detonators 
and  various  other  industrial  products  since  it  left 
the  main  dump,  into  the  gun.  The  breech  closes 
like  a  safe  door,  and  hides  the  shell  from  the  visitor. 
It  is  "good-bye."  He  receives  exaggerated  warn- 
ings of  the  danger  to  his  ears,  stuffs  his  fingers  into 
them  and  opens  his  mouth  as  instructed,  hears  a 
loud  but  by  no  means  deafening  report,  and  sees  a 
spit  of  flame  near  the  breech.  Regulations  of  a 
severe  character  prevent  his  watching  from  an  aero- 
plane the  delivery  of  the  goods  upon  the  customers 
opposite. 

I  have  already  described  the  method  of  locating 
enemy  guns  and  so  forth  by  photography.  Many 
of  the  men  at  this  work  are  like  dentists  rather  than 
soldiers ;  they  are  busy  in  carefully  lit  rooms,  they 
wear  white  overalls,  they  have  clean  hands  and 
laboratory  manners.  The  only  really  romantic 
figure  in  the  whole  of  this  process,  the  only  figure 
that  has  anything  of  the  old  soldierly  swagger 
about  him  still,  is  the  aviator.  And,  as  one  friend 
remarked  to  me  when  I  visited  the  work  of  the  Brit- 
ish flying  corps,  "  The  real  essential  strength  of 
this  arm  is  the  organisation  of  its  repairs.  Here 
is  one  of  the  repair  vans  through  which  our  machine 
guns  go.  It  is  a  motor  workshop  on  wheels.  But 
at  any  time  all  this  park,  everything,  can  pack  up 


142       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

and  move  forward  like  Barnum  and  Bailey's 
Circus.  The  machine  guns  come  through  this  shop 
in  rotation;  they  go  out  again,  cleaned,  repaired, 
made  new  again.  Since  Ave  got  that  working  we 
have  heard  nothing  of  a  machine  gun  jamming  in 
any  air  fight  at  all."  .  .  . 

The  rest  of  the  career  of  the  shell  after  it  has  left 
the  gun  one  must  imagine  chiefly  from  the  incom- 
ing shell  from  the  enemy.  You  see  suddenly  a  fly- 
ing up  of  earth  and  stones  and  anything  else  that  is 
movable  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  shell-burst, 
the  instantaneous  unfolding  of  a  dark  cloud  of 
dust  and  reddish  smoke,  which  comes  very  quickly 
to  a  certain  size  and  then  begins  slowly  to  fray  out 
and  blow  away.  Then  after  seeing  the  cloud  of 
the  burst  you  hear  the  hiss  of  the  shell's  approach, 
and  finally  you  are  hit  by  the  sound  of  the  explo- 
sion. This  is  the  climax  and  end  of  the  life  history 
of  any  shell  that  is  not  a  dud  shell.  Afterwards  the 
battered  fuse  may  serve  as  some  journalist's  paper- 
weight.    The  rest  is  scrap  iron. 

Such  is,  so  to  speak,  the  primary  process  of 
modern  warfare.  I  will  not  draw  the  obvious 
pacifist  moral  of  the  intense  folly  of  human  con- 
centration upon  such  a  process.  The  Germans 
willed  it.  We  Allies  have  but  obeyed  the  German 
will  for  warfare  because  we  could  not  do  otherwise, 
we  have  taken  up  this  simple  game  of  shell  de- 


NEW  AKMS  FOR  OLD  ONES  143 

livery,  and  we  are  teaching  them  that  we  can  play 
it  better,  in  the  hope  that  so  we  and  the  world  may 
be  freed  from  the  German  will-to-power  and  all 
its  humiliating  and  disgusting  consequences  hence- 
forth for  ever.  Europe  now  is  no  more  than  a 
household  engaged  in  holding  up  and  if  possible 
overpowering  a  monomaniac  member. 


Now  the  whole  of  this  process  of  the  making  and 
delivery  of  a  shell,  which  is  the  main  process  of 
modern  warfare,  is  one  that  can  be  far  better  con- 
ducted by  a  man  accustomed  to  industrial  organisa- 
tion or  transit  work  than  by  the  old  type  of  soldier. 
This  is  a  thing  that  cannot  be  too  plainly  stated  or 
too  often  repeated.  Germany  nearly  won  this  war 
because  of  her  tremendously  modern  industrial  re- 
sources ;  but  she  blundered  into  it  and  she  is  losing 
it  because  she  has  too  many  men  in  military  uni- 
form and  because  their  tradition  and  interests  were 
too  powerful  with  her.  All  the  state  and  glories  of 
soldiering,  the  bright  uniforms,  the  feathers  and 
spurs,  the  flags,  the  march-past,  the  disciplined 
massed  advance,  the  charge ;  all  these  are  as  need- 
less and  obsolete  now  in  war  as  the  masks  and 
shields  of  an  old-time  Chinese  brave.  Liberal- 
minded  people  talk  of  the  coming  dangers  of  mill- 


144       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

tarism  in  the  face  of  events  that  prove  conclusively 
that  professional  militarism  is  already  as  dead  as 
Julius  Caesar,  What  is  coming  is  not  so  much  the 
conversion  of  men  into  soldiers  as  the  socialisation 
of  the  economic  organisation  of  the  country  with  a 
view  to  both  national  and  international  necessities. 
We  do  not  want  to  turn  a  chemist  or  a  photographer 
into  a  little  figure  like  a  lead  soldier,  moving  me- 
chanically at  the  word  of  command,  but  we  do  want 
to  make  his  chemistry  or  photography  swiftly  avail- 
able if  the  national  organisation  is  called  upon  to 
fight. 

We  have  discovered  that  the  modern  economic 
organisation  is  in  itself  a  fighting  machine.  It  is 
so  much  so  that  it  is  capable  of  taking  on  and  de- 
feating quite  easily  any  merely  warrior  people  that 
is  so  rash  as  to  pit  itself  against  it.  Within  the 
last  sixteen  years  methods  of  fighting  have  been 
elaborated  that  have  made  war  an  absolutely  hope- 
less adventure  for  any  barbaric  or  non-industrial- 
ised people.  In  the  rush  of  larger  events  few  peo- 
ple have  realised  the  significance  of  the  rapid 
squashing  of  the  Senussi  in  western  Egypt,  and  the 
collapse  of  De  Wet's  rebellion  in  South  Africa. 
Both  these  struggles  would  have  been  long,  tedious 
and  uncertain  even  in  a.  d.  1900.  This  time  they 
have  been,  so  to  speak,  child's  play. 

Occasionally  into  the  writer's  study  there  come 


NEW  ARMS  FOR  OLD  ONES  145 

to  hand  drifting  fragments  of  tlie  American  litera- 
ture upon  the  question  of  "  preparedness,"  and 
American  papers  discussing  the  Mexican  situation. 
In  none  of  these  is  there  evident  any  very  clear 
realisation  of  the  fundamental  revolution  that  has 
occurred  in  military  methods  during  the  last  two 
years.  It  looks  as  if  a  Mexican  war,  for  example, 
was  thought  of  as  an  affair  of  rather  imperfectly 
trained  young  men  with  rifles  and  horses  and  old- 
fashioned  things  like  that.  A  Mexican  war  on  that 
level  might  be  as  tedious  as  the  South  African  war. 
But  if  the  United  States  preferred  to  go  into  Mexi- 
can affairs  with  what  I  may  perhaps  call  a  1916 
autumn  outfit  instead  of  the  small  1900  outfit  she 
seems  to  possess  at  present,  there  is  no  reason  why 
America  should  not  clear  up  any  and  every  Mexican 
guerilla  force  she  wanted  to  in  a  few  w^eeks. 

To  do  that  she  w^ould  need  a  plant  of  a  few  hun- 
dred aeroplanes,  for  the  most  part  armed  with  ma- 
chine guns,  and  the  motor  repair  vans  and  so  forth 
needed  to  go  with  the  aeroplanes,  she  would  need  a 
comparativelj^  small  army  of  infantry  armed  with 
machine  guns,  with  motor  transport,  and  a  few 
small  land  ironclads  with  three-inch  guns.  Of 
course  all  the  ground  automobiles  would  be  pro- 
vided with  the  caterpillar  wheels  that  have  been 
worked  out  by  the  British  experiments  in  the  pres- 
ent war,  and  which  enable  them  to  negotiate  nearly 


146       ITALY,  FKANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

every  sort  of  ground.  Such  a  force  could  locate, 
overtake,  destroy  and  disperse  any  possible  force 
that  a  country  in  the  present  industrial  condition 
of  Mexico  could  put  into  the  field.  No  sort  of  en- 
trenchment or  fortification  possible  in  Mexico  could 
stand  against  it.  It  could  go  from  one  end  of  the 
country  to  the  other  without  serious  loss,  and  hunt 
down  and  capture  any  one  it  wished.  .  .  . 

The  practical  political  consequence  of  the  pres- 
ent development  of  warfare,  of  the  complete  revolu- 
tion in  the  conditions  of  warfare  since  this  century 
began,  is  to  make  war  absolutely  hopeless  for  any 
peoples  not  able  either  to  manufacture  or  procure 
the  very  complicated  appliances  and  munitions  now 
needed  for  its  prosecution.  Countries  like  Mexico, 
Bulgaria,  Serbia,  Afghanistan  or  Abyssinia  are  no 
more  capable  of  going  to  war  without  the  conniv- 
ance and  help  of  manufacturing  states  than  horses 
are  capable  of  flying.  And  this  makes  possible  such 
a  complete  control  of  war  by  the  few  great  states 
which  are  in  the  necessary  state  of  industrial  de- 
velopment as  not  the  most  Utopian  of  us  have 
hitherto  dared  to  imagine. 


§  5 

Infantrymen  w^ith  automobile  transport,  plenti- 
ful machine  guns,  Tanks  and  such-like  accessories ; 


NEW  ARMS  FOR  OLD  ONES  147 

that  is  the  first  Arm  in  modern  war.  The  factory 
hand  and  all  the  material  of  the  shell  route  from 
the  factory  to  the  gun  constitute  the  second  Arm. 
Thirdly  comes  the  artillery,  the  guns  and  the  photo- 
graphic aeroplanes  working  with  the  guns.  Next 
I  suppose  we  must  count  Sappers  and  Miners  as  a 
fourth  Arm  of  greatly  increased  importance.  The 
fifth  and  last  combatant  Arm  is  the  modern  sub- 
stitute for  cavalry;  and  that  also  is  essentially  a 
force  of  aeroplanes  supported  by  automobiles. 
Several  of  the  French  leaders  with  whom  I  talked 
seemed  to  be  convinced  that  the  horse  is  absolutely 
done  with  in  modern  warfare.  There  is  nothing, 
they  declared,  that  cavalry  ever  did  that  cannot 
now  be  done  better  by  aeroplane. 

This  is  something  to  break  the  hearts  of  the  Prus- 
sian junkers  and  of  old-fashioned  British  army 
people.  The  hunt  across  the  English  countryside, 
the  preservation  of  the  fox  as  a  sacred  animal,  the 
race  meeting,  the  stimulation  of  betting  in  all 
classes  of  the  public ;  all  these  things  depend  ulti- 
mately upon  the  proposition  that  the  "breed  of 
horses"  is  of  vital  importance  to  the  military 
strength  of  Great  Britain.  But  if  the  arguments 
of  these  able  French  soldiers  are  sound,  the  cult  of 
the  horse  ceases  to  be  of  any  more  value  to  England 
than  the  elegant  activities  of  the  Toxophilite  So- 
ciety.    Moreover,  there  has  been  a  colossal  buying 


148      ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

of  horses  for  the  British  army,  a  tremendous  or- 
ganisation for  the  purchase  and  suppl}^  of  fodder, 
tlien  employment  of  tens  of  thousands  of  men  as 
grooms,  minders  and  the  like,  who  would  otherwise 
have  been  in  the  munition  factories  or  the  trenches. 
On  the  hypothesis  of  my  French  friends  this  has 
been  a  mere  waste  of  men  and  money.  Behind  the 
British  front  I  motored  for  miles,  passing  just  one 
single  swollen  stream  of  cavalry.  This  is,  these 
theorists  allege,  not  only  a  useless  but  a  dangerous 
force.  It  may  very  easily  get  into  disastrous  trou- 
ble. 

They  ask  to  what  possible  use  can  cavalry  be  put? 
Can  it  be  used  in  attack?  Not  against  trenches; 
that  is  better  done  by  infantrymen  following  up 
gunfire.  Can  it  be  used  against  broken  infantry 
in  the  open?  Not  if  the  enemy  has  one  or  two 
machine  guns  covering  their  retreat.  Against  ex- 
posed infantry  the  swooping  aeroplane  with  a  ma- 
chine gun  is  far  more  deadly  and  more  difficult  to 
hit.  Behind  it  your  infantry  can  follow  to  receive 
surrenders;  in  most  circumstances  they  can  come 
up  on  cycles  if  it  is  a  case  of  getting  up  quickly 
across  a  wide  space.  Similarly  for  pursuit  the  use 
of  wire  and  use  of  the  machine  gun  has  abolished 
the  possibility  of  a  pouring  cavalry  charge.  The 
swooping  aeroplane  does  everything  that  cavalry 
can  do  in  the  way  of  disorganising  the  enemy,  and 


NEW  ARMS  FOR  OLD  ONES  149 

far  more  than  it  can  do  in  the  way  of  silencing  ma- 
chine gnns.  It  can  capture  guns  in  retreat  much 
more  easily  by  bombing  traction  engines  and  com- 
ing down  low  and  shooting  horses  and  men.  An 
ideal  modern  pursuit  would  be  an  advance  of  guns, 
automobiles  full  of  infantry,  motor  cyclists  and 
cyclists,  behind  a  high  screen  of  observation  aero- 
planes and  a  low  screen  of  bombing  and  fighting 
aeroplanes.  Cavalry  might  advance  across  fields 
and  so  forth,  but  only  as  a  very  accessory  part  of 
the  general  advance.  .  .  . 

And  what  else  is  there  for  the  cavalry  to  do? 

It  may  be  argued  that  horses  can  go  over  country 
that  is  impossible  for  automobiles.  That  is  to  ig- 
nore altogether  what  has  been  done  in  this  war  by 
such  devices  as  caterpillar  wheels.  So  far  from 
cavalry  being  able  to  negotiate  country  where  ma- 
chines w^ould  stick  and  fail,  mechanism  can  now 
ride  over  places  where  any  horse  would  flounder. 

I  submit  these  considerations  to  the  horse-lover. 
They  are  not  my  original  observations;  they  have 
been  put  to  me  and  they  have  convinced  me.  Ex- 
cept perhaps  as  a  parent  of  transport  mules  I  see 
no  further  part  henceforth  for  the  horse  to  play  in 
war. 


150       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

§  6 

The  form  and  texture  of  the  coming  warfare  — 
if  there  is  still  warfare  to  come  —  are  not  yet  to  be 
seen  in  their  completeness  upon  the  modern  battle- 
field. One  swallow  does  not  make  a  summer,  nor 
a  handful  of  aeroplanes,  a  "  Tank  "  or  so,  a  few 
acres  of  shell  craters,  and  a  village  here  and  there, 
pounded  out  of  recognition,  do  more  than  fore- 
shadow the  spectacle  of  modernised  war  on  land. 
War  by  these  developments  has  become  the  mo- 
nopoly of  the  five  great  industrial  powers;  it  is 
their  alternative  to  end  or  evolve  it,  and  if  they  con- 
tinue to  disagree,  then  it  must  needs  become  a  spec- 
tacle of  majestic  horror  such  as  no  man  can  yet 
conceive.  It  has  been  wise  of  Mr.  Pennell  there- 
fore, who  has  recently  been  drawing  his  impres- 
sions of  the  war  upon  stone,  to  make  his  pictures 
not  upon  the  battlefield,  but  among  the  huge  indus- 
trial apparatus  that  is  thrusting  behind  and  thrust- 
ing up  through  the  war  of  the  gentlemen  in  spurs. 
He  gives  us  the  splendours  and  immensities  of  forge 
and  gun  pit,  furnace  and  mine  shaft.  He  shows 
you  how  great  they  are  and  how  terrible.  Among 
them  go  the  little  figures  of  men,  robbed  of  all 
dominance,  robbed  of  all  individual  quality.  He 
leaves  it  for  you  to  draw  the  obvious  conclusion 
that  presently  if  we  cannot  contrive  to  put  an  end 


NEW  ARMS  FOR  OLD  ONES  151 

to  war,  blacknesses  like  these,  enormities  and  flares 
and  towering  threats,  will  follow  in  the  track  of  the 
Tanks  and  come  trampling  over  the  bickering  con- 
fusion of  mankind. 

There  is  something  very  striking  in  these  insig- 
nificant and  incidental  men  that  Mr.  Pennell  shows 
us.  Nowhere  does  a  man  dominate  in  all  these 
wonderful  pictures.  You  may  argue  perhaps  that 
that  is  untrue  to  the  essential  realities;  all  this 
array  of  machine  and  workshop,  all  this  marshalled 
power  and  purpose,  has  been  the  creation  of  in- 
ventor and  business  organiser.  But  are  we  not  a 
little  too  free  with  that  word  '^ creation"?  Fal- 
staff  was  a  "  creation "  perhaps  or  the  Sistine 
sibyls ;  there  we  have  indubitably  an  end  conceived 
and  sought  and  achieved;  but  did  these  inventors 
and  business  organisers  do  more  than  heed  certain 
unavoidable  imperatives?  Seeking  coal  they  were 
obliged  to  mine  in  a  certain  way ;  seeking  steel  they 
had  to  do  this  and  this  and  not  that  and  that; 
seeking  profit  they  had  to  obey  the  imperative  of 
economy.  So  little  did  they  plan  their  ends  that 
most  of  these  manufacturers  speak  with  a  kind  of 
astonishment  of  the  deadlv  use  to  which  their  works 
are  put.  They  find  themselves  making  the  new 
war  as  a  man  might  wake  out  of  some  drugged 
condition  to  find  himself  strangling  his  mother. 

So  that  Mr.  Pennell's  sketchy  and  transient  hu- 


152      ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

man  figures  seem  altogether  right  to  me.  He  sees 
these  forges,  workshops,  cranes  and  the  like,  as 
inhuman  and  as  wonderful  as  cliffs  or  great  caves 
or  icebergs  or  the  stars.  They  are  a  new  aspect  of 
the  logic  of  physical  necessity  that  made  all  these 
older  things,  and  he  seizes  upon  the  majesty  and 
beauty  of  their  dimensions  with  an  entire  impar- 
tiality. And  they  are  as  impartial.  Through  all 
these  lithographs  runs  one  present  motif,  the  motif 
of  the  supreme  effort  of  western  civilisation  to  save 
itself  and  the  world  from  the  dominance  of  the  re- 
actionary German  Imperialism  that  has  seized  the 
weapons  and  resources  of  modern  science.  The 
pictures  are  arranged  to  shape  out  the  life  of  a 
shell,  from  the  mine  to  the  great  gun;  nothing  re- 
mains of  their  history  to  show  except  the  ammuni- 
tion dump,  the  gun  in  action  and  the  shell-burst. 
Upon  this  theme  all  these  great  appearances  are 
strung  to-day.  But  to-morrow  they  may  be  strung 
upon  some  other  and  nobler  purpose.  These  gigan- 
tic beings  of  which  the  engineer  is  the  master  and 
slave,  are  neither  benevolent  nor  malignant.  To- 
day they  produce  destruction,  they  are  the  slaves 
of  the  spur;  to-morrow  we  hope  they  will  bridge 
and  carry  and  house  and  help  again. 

For  that  peace  we  struggle  against  the  dull  in- 
flexibility of  the  German  Will-to-Power. 


V 

TANKS 

§  1 

It  is  the  British  who  have  produced  the  "  land  iron- 
clad" since  I  returned  from  France,  and  used  it 
apparently  with  very  good  effect.  I  felt  no  little 
chagrin  at  not  seeing  them  there,  because  I  have  a 
peculiar  interest  in  these  contrivances.  It  would 
be  more  than  human  not  to  claim  a  little  in  this 
matter.  I  described  one  in  a  story  in  The  Strand 
Magazine  in  1903,  and  my  story  could  stand  in 
parallel  columns  beside  the  first  account  of  these 
monsters  in  action  given  by  Mr.  Beach  Thomas  or 
Mr.  Philip  Gibbs.  My  friend  M.  Joseph  Reinach 
has  successfully  passed  off  long  extracts  from  my 
story  as  descriptions  of  the  Tanks  upon  British 
officers  who  had  just  seen  them.  The  filiation  was 
indeed  quite  traceable.  They  were  my  grandchil- 
dren —  I  felt  a  little  like  King  Lear  when  first  I 
read  about  them.  Yet  let  me  state  at  once  that  I 
was  certainly  not  their  prime  originator.  I  took 
up  an  idea,  manipulated  it  slightly,  and  handed  it 
on.     The  idea  was  suggested  to  me  by  the  con- 

153 


154       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

trivances  of  a  certain  Mr.  Diplock,  whose  "  ped- 
rail "  notion,  the  notion  of  a  wheel  that  was  some- 
thing more  than  a  wheel,  a  wheel  that  would  take 
locomotives  up  hill-sides  and  over  ploughed  fields, 
was  public  property  nearly  twenty  years  ago.  Pos- 
sibly there  were  others  before  Diplock.  To  the 
Ped-rail  also  Commander  Murray  Sueter,  one  of 
the  many  experimentalists  upon  the  early  tanks, 
admits  his  indebtedness,  and  it  would  seem  that 
Mr.  Diplock  was  actually  concerned  in  the  earlier 
stage  of  the  tanks. 

Since  my  return  I  have  been  able  to  see  the  Tank 
at  home,  through  the  courtesy  of  the  Ministiy  of 
Munitions.  They  have  progressed  far  beyond  any 
recognisable  resemblance  to  the  initiatives  of  Mr. 
Diplock;  they  have  approximated  rather  to  the 
American  caterpillar.  As  I  suspected  when  first 
I  heard  of  these  devices,  the  War  Office  and  the  old 
army  people  had  practically  nothing  to  do  with 
their  development.  They  took  to  them  very  re- 
luctantly —  as  they  have  taken  to  every  novelty  in 
this  war.  One  brilliant  general  scrawled  over  an 
early  proposal  the  entirely  characteristic  comment 
that  it  was  a  pity  the  inventor  could  not  use  his 
imagination  to  better  purpose.  (That  foolish  Brit- 
ish trick  of  sneering  at  "  imagination  "  has  cost  us 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  useless  casualties,  and 
may  yet  lose  us  the  war.)     The  Tanks  were  first 


TANKS  155 

mooted  at  the  front  about  a  year  and  a  half  ago; 
Mr.  Winston  Churchill  was  then  asking  questions 
about  their  practicability;  he  filled  many  simple 
souls  with  terror;  they  thought  him  a  most  dan- 
gerous lunatic.  The  actual  making  of  the  Tanks 
arose  as  an  irregular  side  development  of  the 
armoured-car  branch  of  the  Royal  Naval  Air  Serv- 
ice work.  The  names  most  closely  associated  with 
the  work  are  ( I  quote  a  reply  of  Dr.  Macnamara's 
in  the  House  of  Commons)  Mr.  d'Eyncourt,  the  Di- 
rector of  Naval  Construction,  Mr.  W.  O.  Tritton, 
Lieut.  Wilson,  R.N.A.S.,  Mr.  Bussell,  Lieut.  Stern, 
R.N.A.S.,  who  is  now  Colonel  Stern,  Captain 
Symes,  and  Mr.  F.  Skeens.  There  are  many  other 
claims  too  numerous  to  mention  in  detail. 

But  however  much  the  Tanks  may  disconcert  the 
gallant  Colonel  Newcomes  who  throw  an  air  of  re- 
straint over  our  victorious  front,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  they  are  an  important  as  well  as  a  novel 
development  of  the  modern  offensive.  Of  course 
neither  the  Tanks  nor  their  very  obvious  next  de- 
velopments are  going  to  wrest  the  decisive  pre- 
eminence from  the  aeroplane.  The  aeroplane  re- 
mains now  more  than  ever  the  Instrument  of  victory 
upon  the  western  front.  Aerial  ascendency,  prop- 
erly utilised,  is  victory.  But  the  mobile  armoured 
big  gun  and  the  Tank  as  a  machine-gun  silencer 
must  enormously  facilitate  an  advance  against  the 


156       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

blinded  enemy.  Neither  of  them  can  advance 
against  properly  aimed  big  gun  fire.  That  has  to 
be  disposed  of  before  they  make  their  entrance.  It 
remains  the  function  of  the  aeroplane  to  locate  the 
hostile  big  guns  and  to  direct  the  tir-de-demolition 
upon  them  before  the  advance  begins  —  possibly 
even  to  bomb  them  out.  But  hitherto,  after  the  de- 
struction or  driving  back  of  the  defender's  big  guns 
has  been  effected,  the  dug-out  and  machine  gun 
have  still  inflicted  heavy  losses  upon  the  advancing 
infantry  until  the  fight  is  won.  So  soon  as  the  big 
guns  are  out,  the  tanks  will  advance,  destroying 
machine  guns,  completing  the  destruction  of  the 
wire,  and  holding  prisoners  immobile.  Then  the 
infantry  will  follow  to  gather  in  the  sheaves.  Mul- 
titudinously  produced  and  —  I  write  it  with  a  de- 
fiant eye  on  Colonel  Newcome  —  properly  handled, 
these  land  ironclads  are  going  to  do  very  great 
things  in  shortening  the  war,  in  pursuit,  in  break- 
ing up  the  retreating  enemy.  Given  the  air  as- 
cendency, and  I  am  utterly  unable  to  imagine  any 
way  of  conclusively  stopping  or  even  greatly  de- 
laying an  offensive  thus  equipped. 


§  2 

The  young  of  even  the  most  horrible  beasts  have 
something  piquant  and  engaging  about  them,  and 


TANKS  157 

so  I  suppose  it  is  in  the  way  of  things  that  the  land 
ironclad  which  opens  a  new  and  more  dreadful  and 
destructive  phase  in  the  human  folly  of  warfare, 
should  appear  first  as  if  it  were  a  joke.  Never  has 
any  such  thing  so  completely  masked  its  wickedness 
under  an  appearance  of  genial  silliness.  The  Tank 
is  a  creature  to  which  one  naturally  flings  a  pet 
name ;  the  five  or  six  I  was  shown  w^audering,  root- 
ing and  climbing  over  obstacles,  round  a  large 
field  near  X,  were  as  amusing  and  disarming  as  a 
litter  of  lively  young  pigs. 

At  first  the  War  Office  prevented  the  publication 
of  any  pictures  or  descriptions  of  these  contriv- 
ances except  abroad;  then  abruptly  the  embargo 
was  relaxed  and  the  press  was  flooded  with  photo- 
graphs. The  reader  will  be  familiar  now  with  their 
appearance.  They  are  like  large  slugs  wdth  an  un- 
derside a  little  like  the  flattened  rockers  of  a  rock- 
ing-horse, slugs  between  20  and  40  feet  long.  They 
are  like  flat-sided  slugs,  slugs  of  spirit,  who  raise 
an  enquiring  snout,  like  the  snout  of  a  dogfish,  into 
the  air.  They  crawl  upon  their  bellies  in  a  way 
that  would  be  tedious  to  describe  to  the  general 
reader  and  unnecessary  to  describe  to  the  enquiring 
specialist.  They  go  over  the  ground  with  the  slid- 
ing speed  of  active  snails.  Behind  them  trail  two 
wheels,  supporting  a  flimsy  tail,  wheels  that  strike 
one  as  incongruous  as  if  a  monster  began  kangaroo 


158       ITALY,  FKANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

and  ended  doll's  perambulator.  (These  wheels  an- 
noy me.)  They  are  not  steely  monsters;  they  are 
painted  the  drab  and  unassuming  colours  that  are 
fashionable  in  modern  warfare,  so  that  the  armour 
seems  rather  like  the  integument  of  a  rhinoceros. 
At  the  sides  of  the  head  project  armoured  cheeks, 
and  from  above  these  stick  out  guns  that  look  like 
stalked  eyes.  That  is  the  general  appearance  of 
the  contemporary  tank. 

It  slides  on  the  ground;  the  silly  little  wheels 
that  so  detract  from  the  genial  bestiality  of  its  ap- 
pearance dandle  and  bump  behind  it.  It  swings 
round  about  its  axis.  It  comes  to  an  obstacle,  a 
low  wall  let  us  say,  or  a  heap  of  bricks,  and  sets  to 
work  to  climb  with  its  snout.  It  rears  over  the 
obstacle,  it  raises  its  straining  belly,  it  overhangs 
more  and  more,  and  at  last  topples  forward;  it 
sways  upon  the  heap  and  then  goes  plunging  down- 
wards, sticking  out  the  weak  counterpoise  of  its 
wheeled  tail.  If  it  comes  to  a  house  or  a  tree  or  a 
wall  or  such-like  obstruction  it  rams  against  it  so 
as  to  bring  all  its  weight  to  bear  upon  it  —  it 
weighs  some  tons  —  and  then  climbs  over  the 
debris.  I  saw  it,  and  incredulous  soldiers  of  ex- 
perience watched  it  at  the  same  time,  cross  trenches 
and  wallow  amazingly  through  muddy  exaggera- 
tions of  shell  holes.  Then  I  repeated  the  tour  in- 
side. 


TANKS  159 

Agaiu  the  Tank  is  like  the  slug.  The  slug,  as 
every  biological  student  knows,  is  unexpectedly 
complicated  inside.  The  Tank  is  as  crowded  with 
inward  parts  as  a  battleship.  It  is  filled  with  en- 
gines, guns  and  ammunition,  and  in  the  interstices 
men. 

"  You  will  smash  your  hat,"  said  Colonel  Stern. 
"  No ;  keep  it  on,  or  else  you  will  smash  your  head." 

Only  Mr.  C.  K.  W.  Nevinson  could  do  justice  to 
the  interior  of  a  Tank.  You  see  a  hand  gripping 
something;  you  see  the  eyes  and  forehead  of  an 
engineer's  face ;  you  i3erceive  that  an  overall  bluish- 
ness  beyond  the  engine  is  the  back  of  another  man. 
"  Don't  hold  that,"  says  some  one.  "  It  is  too  hot. 
Hold  on  to  that."  The  engines  roar,  so  loudly  that 
I  doubt  w^hether  one  could  hear  guns  without;  the 
floor  begins  to  slope  and  slopes  until  one  seems  to  be 
at  forty-five  degrees  or  thereabouts ;  then  the  whole 
concern  swings  up  and  sways  and  slants  the  other 
way.  You  have  crossed  a  bank.  You  heel  side- 
ways. Through  the  door  which  has  been  left  open 
you  see  the  little  group  of  engineers,  staff  officers 
and  naval  men  receding  and  falling  away  behind 
you.  You  straighten  up  and  go  up  hill.  You  halt 
and  begin  to  rotate.  Through  the  open  door,  the 
green  field  with  its  red  walls,  rows  of  worksheds 
and  forests  of  chimneys  in  the  background,  begins 
a  steady  processional  movement.     The  group  of 


160       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

engineers  and  officers  and  naval  men  appears  at  the 
other  side  of  the  door  and  further  off.  Then  comes 
a  sprint  down  hill.  You  descend  and  stretch  jour 
legs. 

About  the  field  other  Tanks  are  doing  their 
stunts.  One  is  struggling  in  an  apoplectic  way  in 
the  mud  pit  with  a  cheek  half  buried.  It  noses  its 
way  out  and  on  with  an  air  of  animal  relief. 

They  are  like  jokes  by  Heath  Robinson.  One 
forgets  that  these  things  have  already  saved  the 
lives  of  many  hundreds  of  our  soldiers  and  smashed 
and  defeated  thousands  of  Germans. 

Said  one  soldier  to  me :  "  In  the  old  attacks  you 
used  to  see  the  British  dead  lying  outside  the  ma- 
chine gun  emplacements  like  birds  outside  a  butt 
with  a  good  shot  inside.  2Vow_,  these  things  walk 
through." 

§  3 

I  saw  other  things  that  day  at  X.  The  Tank  is 
only  a  beginning  in  a  new  phase  of  warfare.  Of 
these  other  things  I  may  only  write  in  the  most 
general  terms. 

But  though  Tanks  and  their  collaterals  are  being 
made  upon  a  very  considerable  scale  in  X,  already 
I  realised  as  I  walked  through  gigantic  forges  as 
high  and  marvellous  as  cathedrals,  and  from  work- 
shed  to  workshed  where  gun  carriages,  ammuni- 


TANKS  161 

tion  carts  and  a  hundred  such  things  were  flowing 
into  existence  with  the  swelling  abundance  of  a 
river  that  flows  out  of  a  gorge,  that  as  the  demand 
for  the  new  developments  grows  clear  and  strong, 
the  resources  of  Britain  are  capable  still  of  a  tre- 
mendous response.  If  only  we  do  not  rob  these 
great  factories  and  works  of  their  men. 

Upon  this  question  certain  things  need  to  be  said 
very  plainly.  The  decisive  factor  in  the  sort  of 
war  we  are  now  waging  is  the  production  and  right 
use  of  mechanical  material ;  victory  in  this  war  de- 
pends now  upon  three  things,  the  aeroplane,  the 
gun,  and  the  Tank  developments.  These  —  and 
not  crowds  of  men  —  are  the  prime  necessity  for  a 
successful  offensive.  Every  man  we  draw  from 
munition  making  to  the  ranks  brings  our  western 
condition  nearer  to  the  military  condition  of  Rus- 
sia. In  these  things  we  may  be  easily  misled  by 
military  "  experts."  We  have  to  remember  that 
the  military  "  expert "  Is  a  man  who  learnt  his 
business  before  1914,  and  that  the  business  of  war 
has  been  absolutely  revolutionised  since  1914;  the 
military  expert  is  a  man  trained  to  think  of  war  as 
essentially  an  affair  of  cavalry,  infantry  in  forma- 
tion, and  field  guns,  whereas  cavalry  is  entirely 
obsolete,  infantry  no  longer  fights  in  formation, 
and  the  methods  of  gunnery  have  been  entirely 
changed.     The  military  man  I  observe  still  runs 


162       ITALY,  FKANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

about  the  world  in  spurs,  he  travels  in  trains  in 
spurs,  he  walks  in  spurs,  he  thinks  in  terms  of 
spurs.     He  has  still  to  discover  that  it  is  about  as 
ridiculous  for  a  soldier  to  go  about  in  spurs  to-day 
as  if  he  were  to  carry  a  crossbow.     I  take  it  these 
spurs  are  only  the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  an 
inw^ard  obsolescence.     The  disposition  of  the  mili- 
tai-y  "  expert  "  is  still  to  think  too  little  of  machin- 
ery and  to  demand  too  much  of  the  men.     He  makes 
irrational  demands  for  men  and  for  the  wrong  sort 
of  men.     Behind  our  front  at  the  time  of  my  visit 
there  were,  for  example,  many  thousands  of  cav- 
alry, men  tending  horses,  men  engaged  in  trans- 
porting  bulky    fodder   for   horses    and   the    like. 
These  men  were  doing  about  as  much  in  this  war 
as  if  they  had  been  at  Timbuctoo.     Every  man  who 
is  taken  from  munition  making  at  X  to  spur-wor- 
shipping in  khaki,  is  a  dead  loss  to  the  military 
efficiency  of  the  country.     Every  man  that  is  needed 
or  is  likely  to  be  needed  for  the  actual  operations 
of  modern  w^arfare  can  be  got  by  combing  out  the 
cavalry,  the  brewing  and  distilling  industries,  the 
theatres  and  music  halls,  and  the  like  unproductive 
occupations.     The  understaffing  of  munition  w^orks, 
the  diminution  of  their  efficiency  by  the  use  of  aged 
and  female  labour,  is  the  straight  course  to  failure 
in  this  war. 

In  X,  in  the  forges  and  machine  shops,  I  saw  al- 


TANKS  163 

ready  too  large  a  proportion  of  boys  and  grey  heads. 

War  is  a  thing  that  changes  very  rapidly,  and  we 
have  in  the  Tanks  only  the  first  of  a  great  series  of 
offensive  developments.  They  are  bound  to  be  im- 
proved, at  a  great  pace.  The  method  of  using  them 
will  change  very  rapidly.  Any  added  invention 
will  necessitate  the  scrapping  of  old  types  and  the 
production  of  the  new  patterns  in  quantity.  It  is 
of  supreme  necessity  to  the  Allies  if  they  are  to  win 
this  war  outright  that  the  lead  in  inventions  and 
enterprise  which  the  British  have  won  over  the 
Germans  in  this  matter  should  be  retained.  It  is 
our  game  now  to  press  the  advantage  for  all  it  is 
worth.  We  have  to  keep  ahead  to  win.  We  can- 
not do  so  unless  we  have  unstinted  men  and  un- 
stinted material  to  produce  each  new  development 
as  its  use  is  realised. 

Given  that  much,  the  Tank  will  enormously  en- 
hance the  advantage  of  the  new  offensive  method 
on  the  French  front;  the  method,  that  is,  of  gun 
demolition  after  aerial  photography,  followed  by 
an  advance;  it  is  a  huge  addition  to  our  prospect 
of  decisive  victory.  What  does  it  do?  It  solves 
two  problems.  The  existing  Tank  affords  a  means 
of  advancing  against  machine  gun  fire  and  of  de- 
stroying wire  and  machine  guns  without  much  risk 
of  loss,  so  soon  as  the  big  guns  have  done  their  duty 
by  the  enemy  guns.     And  also  behind  the  Tank  it- 


164       ITALY,  FKANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

self,  it  is  useless  to  couceal,  lies  the  possibility  of 
bringing  up  big  guns  and  big  gun  ammunition, 
across  nearly  any  sort  of  country,  as  fast  as  the 
advance  can  press  forward.  Hitherto  every  ad- 
vance has  paid  a  heavy  toll  to  the  machine  gun,  and 
every  advance  has  had  to  halt  after  a  couple  of 
miles  or  so  while  the  big  guns  (taking  five  or  six 
days  for  the  job)  toiled  up  to  the  new  positions. 


§  4 

It  is  impossible  to  restrain  a  note  of  sharp 
urgency  from  what  one  has  to  say  about  these  de- 
velopments. The  Tanks  remove  the  last  technical 
difficulties  in  our  way  to  decisive  victory  and  a 
permanent  peace;  they  also  afford  a  reason  for 
straining  every  nerve  to  bring  about  a  decision  and 
peace  soon.  At  the  risk  of  seeming  an  imaginative 
alarmist  I  would  like  to  point  out  the  reasons  these 
things  disclose  for  hurrying  this  war  to  a  decision 
and  doing  our  utmost  to  arrange  the  world's  affairs 
so  as  to  make  another  war  improbable.  Already 
these  serio-comic  Tanks,  weighing  something  over 
twenty  tons  or  so,  have  gone  slithering  and  sliding 
over  dead  and  wounded  men.  That  is  not  an  inci- 
dent for  sensitive  minds  to  dwell  upon,  but  it  is  a 
mere  little  child's  play  anticipation  of  what  the 


TANKS  .     165 

big  land  ironclads  that  are  bound  to  come  if  there 
is  no  world  pacification,  are  going  to  do. 

What  lies  behind  the  Tank  depends  upon  this 
fact;  there  is  no  definable  upward  limit  of  mass. 
Upon  that  I  would  lay  all  the  stress  possible,  be- 
cause everything  turns  upon  that. 

You  cannot  make  a  land  ironclad  so  big  and 
heavy  but  that  you  cannot  make  a  caterpillar  track 
wide  enough  and  strong  enough  to  carry  it  forward. 
Tanks  are  quite  possible  that  will  carry  twenty -inch 
or  twenty -five  inch  guns,  besides  minor  armament. 
Such  Tanks  may  be  undesirable;  the  production 
may  exceed  the  industrial  resources  of  any  empire 
to  produce;  but  there  is  no  inherent  impossibility 
in  such  things.  There  are  not  even  the  same  limi- 
tations as  to  draught  and  docking  accommodation 
that  set  bounds  to  the  size  of  battleships.  It  fol- 
lows, therefore,  as  a  necessary  deduction  that  if 
the  world's  affairs  are  so  left  at  the  end  of  the  war 
that  the  race  of  armaments  continues,  the  Tank, 
which  at  present  weighs  under  twenty  tons,  will 
develop  steadily  into  a  tremendous  instrument  of 
warfare,  driven  by  engines  of  scores  of  thousands 
of  horse-power,  tracking  on  a  track  scores  of  hun- 
dreds of  yards  wide  and  weighing  hundreds  or 
thousands  of  tons.  Nothing  but  a  world  agreement 
not  to  do  so  can  prevent  this  logical  development 


166       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

of  the  land  ironclad.  Such  a  structure  will  make 
wheel-ruts  scores  of  feet  deep;  it  will  plough  up, 
devastate  and  destroy  the  country  it  passes  over 
altogether. 

For  my  own  part  I  never  imagined  the  land  iron- 
clad idea  would  get  loose  into  war.  I  thought  that 
the  military  intelligence  was  essentially  unimag- 
inative, and  that  such  an  aggressive  military  power 
as  Germany,  dominated  by  military  people,  would 
never  produce  anything  of  the  sort.  I  thought  that 
this  war  would  be  fought  out  without  Tanks  and 
that  then  war  would  come  to  an  end.  For  of 
course  it  is  mere  stupidity  that  makes  people  doubt 
the  ultimate  ending  of  war.  I  have  been  so  far 
justified  in  these  expectations  of  mine,  that  it  is 
not  from  military  sources  that  these  things  have 
come.  They  have  been  thrust  upon  the  soldiers 
from  without.  But  now  that  they  are  loose,  now 
that  they  are  in  war,  we  have  to  face  their  full  pos- 
sibilities, to  use  our  advantage  in  them  and  press 
on  to  the  end  of  the  war.  In  support  of  a  photo- 
aero  directed  artillery,  even  our  present  Tanks  can 
be  used  to  complete  an  invincible  offensive.  We 
shall  not  so  much  push  as  ram.  It  is  doubtful  if 
the  Germans  can  get  anything  of  the  sort  into 
action  before  six  months  are  out,  and  by  that  time 
we  should  be  using  vastlv  more  formidable  Tanks 
than  those  we  are  making  now.     We  ought  to  get 


TANKS  167 

the  war  on  to  German  soil  before  the  Tanks  have 
grown  to  more  than  three  or  four  times  their  pres- 
ent size.  Then  it  will  not  matter  so  much  how 
much  bigger  they  grow.  It  will  be  the  German 
landscape  that  will  suffer. 

After  one  has  seen  the  actual  Tanks  it  is  not 
very  difficult  to  close  one's  eyes  and  figure  the  sort 
of  Tank  that  may  be  arguing  with  Germany  in  a 
few  months'  time  about  the  restoration  of  Belgium 
and  Serbia  and  France,  the  restoration  of  the 
sunken  tonnage,  the  penalties  of  the  various  Zeppe- 
lin and  submarine  murders,  the  freedom  of  seas 
and  land  alike  from  piracy,  the  evacuation  of 
Poland,  including  Posen,  and  the  guarantees  for 
the  future  peace  of  Europe.  The  machine  will  be 
perhaps  as  big  as  a  destroyer  and  more  heavily 
armed  and  equipped.  It  will  swim  over  and 
through  the  soil  at  a  pace  of  ten  or  twelve  miles  an 
hour.  In  front  of  it  will  be  corn  land,  neat  woods, 
orchards,  pasture,  gardens,  villages  and  towns.  It 
will  advance  upon  its  belly  with  a  swaying  motion, 
devouring  the  ground  beneath  it.  Behind  it  masses 
of  soil  and  rock,  lumps  of  turf,  splintered  wood, 
bits  of  houses,  occasional  streaks  of  red,  will  drop 
from  its  track,  and  it  will  leave  a  wake,  six  or  seven 
times  as  wide  as  a  high  road,  from  which  all  soil, 
all  cultivation,  all  semblance  to  cultivated  or  cul- 
tivatable  land  will  have  disappeared.     It  will  not 


168       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

even  be  a  track  of  soil.  It  will  be  a  track  of  sub- 
soil laid  bare.  It  will  be  a  flayed  strip  of  nature. 
In  the  course  of  its  fighting  the  monster  may  have 
to  turn  about.  It  will  then  halt  and  spin  slowly 
round,  grinding  out  an  arena  of  desolation  with  a 
circumference  equal  to  its  length.  If  it  has  to  re- 
treat and  advance  again  these  streaks  and  holes 
of  destruction  will  increase  and  multiply.  Behind 
the  fighting  line  these  monsters  will  manoeuvre  to 
and  fro,  destroying  the  land  for  all  ordinary  agri- 
cultural purposes  for  ages  to  come.  The  first  imag- 
inative account  of  the  land  ironclad  that  was  ever 
written  concluded  with  the  words,  "  They  are  the 
reductio  ad  ahsiirdum  of  war."  They  are,  and  it  is 
to  the  engineers,  the  ironmasters,  the  workers  and 
the  inventive  talent  of  Great  Britain  and  France 
that  we  must  look  to  ensure  that  it  is  in  Germany, 
the  great  teacher  of  war,  that  this  demonstration 
of  war's  ultimate  absurdity  is  completed. 

For  forty  years  Frankenstein  Germany  invoked 
war,  turned  every  development  of  material  and  so- 
cial science  to  aggressive  ends,  and  at  last  when  she 
felt  the  time  was  ripe  she  let  loose  the  new  monster 
that  she  had  made  of  war  to  cow  the  spirit  of  man- 
kind. She  set  the  thing  tramping  through  Bel- 
gium. She  cannot  grumble  if  at  last  it  comes  home, 
stranger  and  more  dreadful  even  than  she  made  it, 


TANKS  IGi) 

trampling  the  German  towns  and  fields  with  Ger- 
man blood  upon  it  and  its  eyes  towards  Berlin. 

This  logical  development  of  the  Tank  idea  may 
seem  a  gloomy  prospect  for  mankind.  But  it  is 
open  to  question  whether  the  tremendous  develop- 
ment of  warfare  that  has  gone  on  in  the  last  two 
years  does  after  all  open  a  prospect  of  unmitigated 
gloom.  There  has  been  a  good  deal  of  cheap  and 
despondent  sneering  recently  at  the  phrase,  "  The 
war  that  will  end  war."  It  is  still  possible  to 
maintain  that  that  may  be  a  correct  description  of 
this  war.  It  has  to  be  remembered  that  war,  as 
the  aeroplane  and  the  Tank  have  made  it,  has  al- 
ready become  an  impossible  luxury  for  any  barbaric 
uncivilised  people.  War  on  the  grade  that  has  been 
achieved  on  the  Somme  predicates  an  immense  in- 
dustrialism behind  it.  Of  all  the  States  in  the 
world  only  four  can  certainly  be  said  to  be  fully 
capable  of  sustaining  war  at  the  level  to  w^hich  it 
has  now  been  brought  upon  the  Western  Front. 
These  are  Britain,  France,  Germany,  and  the 
United  States  of  America.  Less  certainly  equal  to 
the  effort  are  Italy,  Japan,  Russia,  and  Austria. 
These  eight  powers  are  the  only  powers  in  the  world 
capable  of  warfare  under  modern  conditions.  Five 
are  already  Allies  and  one  is  incurably  pacific. 
There  is  no  other  power  or  people  in  the  world  that 


170       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

cau  go  to  war  now  without  the  consent  and  con- 
nivance of  these  great  powers.  If  we  consider  their 
alliances,  we  may  count  it  that  the  matter  rests  now 
between  two  groups  of  Allies  and  one  neutral 
power.  So  that  while  on  the  one  hand  the  devel- 
opment of  modern  warfare  of  which  the  Tank  is 
the  present  symbol  opens  a  prospect  of  limitless 
senseless  destruction,  it  opens  on  the  other  hand  a 
prospect  of  organised  world  control.  This  Tank 
development  must  ultimately  bring  the  need  of  a 
real  permanent  settlement  within  the  compass  of 
the  meanest  of  diplomatic  intelligences.  A  peace 
that  will  restore  competitive  armaments  has  now 
become  a  less  desirable  prospect  for  every  one  than 
a  continuation  of  the  war.  Things  w^ere  bad 
enough  before  when  the  land  forces  were  still  in  a 
primitive  phase  of  infantry,  cavalry  and  artillery, 
and  when  the  only  real  race  to  develop  monsters 
and  destructors  was  for  sea  power.  But  the  race 
for  sea  power  before  1914  was  mere  child's  play 
to  the  breeding  of  engineering  monstrosities  for 
land  warfare  that  must  now  follow  any  indetermi- 
nate peace  settlement.  I  am  no  blind  believer  in 
the  wisdom  of  mankind,  but  I  cannot  believe  that 
men  are  so  insensate  and  headstrong  as  to  miss  the 
plain  omens  of  the  present  situation. 

So  that  after  all  the  cheerful  amusement  the  sight 
of  a  Tank  causes  may  not  be  so  very  unreasonable. 


TANKS  171 

These  things  may  be  no  more  than  one  of  these 
penetrating  flashes  of  wit  that  will  sometimes  light 
up  and  dispel  the  contentions  of  an  angry  man.  If 
they  are  not  that  then  they  are  the  grimmest  jest 
that  ever  set  men  grinning.  Wait  and  see,  if  you 
do  not  believe  me. 


HOW  PEOPLE  THINK  ABOUT  THE 

WAR 


DO  THEY  REALLY  THINK  AT  ALL? 

All  human  affairs  are  mental  affairs;  the  bright 
ideas  of  to-day  are  the  realities  of  to-morrow. 
The  real  history  of  mankind  is  the  history  of  how 
ideas  have  arisen,  how  they  have  taken  possession 
of  men's  minds,  how  they  have  struggled,  altered, 
proliferated,  decayed.  There  is  nothing  in  this 
war  at  all  but  a  conflict  of  ideas,  traditions,  and 
mental  habits.  The  German  Will,  clothed  in  con- 
ceptions of  aggression  and  fortified  by  cynical  false- 
hood, struggles  against  the  fundamental  sanity  of 
the  German  mind  and  the  confused  protest  of  man- 
kind. So  that  the  most  permanently  important 
thing  in  the  tragic  process  of  this  war  is  the  change 
of  opinion  that  is  going  on.  What  are  people 
making  of  it?  Is  it  producing  any  great  common 
understandings,  any  fruitful  unanimities? 

No  doubt  it  is  producing  enormous  quantities  of 
cerebration,  but  is  it  anything  more  than  chaotic 

172 


DO  THEY  REALLY  THINK  AT  ALL?     173 

and  futile  cerebration?  We  are  told  all  sorts  of 
things  in  answer  to  that,  things  often  without  a 
scrap  of  evidence  or  probability  to  support  them. 
It  is,  we  are  assured,  turning  people  to  religion, 
making  them  moral  and  thoughtful.  It  is  also,  we 
are  assured  with  equal  confidence,  turning  them  to 
despair  and  moral  disaster.  It  will  be  followed  by 
(1)  a  period  of  moral  renascence,  and  (2)  a  de- 
bauch. It  is  going  to  make  the  workers  (1)  more 
and  (2)  less  obedient  and  industrious.  It  is  (1) 
inuring  men  to  war  and  (2)  filling  them  with  a 
passionate  resolve  never  to  suffer  war  again.  And 
so  on.  I  propose  now  to  ask,  what  is  really  happen- 
ing in  this  matter?  How  is  human  opinion  chang- 
ing? I  have  opinions  of  my  own  and  they  are 
bound  to  colour  my  discussion.  The  reader  must 
allow  for  that,  and  as  far  as  possible  I  wdll  remind 
him  where  necessary  to  make  his  allowance. 

Now  first  I  would  ask,  is  any  really  continuous 
and  thorough  mental  process  going  on  at  all  about 
this  war?  I  mean,  is  there  any  considerable  num- 
ber of  people  who  are  seeing  it  as  a  whole,  taking 
it  in  as  a  whole,  trying  to  get  a  general  idea  of 
it  from  which  they  can  form  directing  conclusions 
for  the  future?  Is  there  any  considerable  number 
of  people  even  trying  to  do  that?  At  any  rate  let 
me  point  out  first  that  there  is  quite  an  enormous 
mass  of  people  who  —  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  their 


174       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

minds  are  concentrated  on  aspects  of  this  war,  wlio 
are  at  present  hearing,  talking,  experiencing  little 
else  than  the  war  —  are  nevertheless  neither  doing 
nor  trying  to  do  anything  that  deserves  to  be  called 
thinking  about  it  at  all.  They  may  even  be  suffer- 
ing quite  terribly  by  it.  But  they  are  no  more  mas- 
tering its  causes,  reasons,  conditions,  and  the  possi- 
bility of  its  future  prevention  than  a  monkey  that 
has  been  rescued  in  a  scorching  condition  from  the 
burning  of  a  house  will  have  mastered  the  problem 
of  a  fire.  It  is  just  happening  to  and  about  them. 
It  may,  for  anything  they  have  learnt  about  it,  hap- 
pen to  them  again. 

A  vast  majority  of  people  are  being  swamped  by 
the  spectacular  side  of  the  business.  It  was  very 
largely  my  fear  of  being  so  swamped  myself  that 
made  me  reluctant  to  go  as  a  spectator  to  the  front. 
I  knew  that  my  chances  of  being  hit  by  a  bullet  were 
infinitesimal,  but  I  was  extremely  afraid  of  being 
hit  by  some  too  vivid  impression.  I  was  afraid 
that  I  might  see  some  horribly  wounded  man  or 
some  decayed  dead  body  that  would  so  scar  my 
memory  and  stamp  such  horror  into  me  as  to  reduce 
me  to  a  mere  useless,  gibbering,  stop-the-war-at-any- 
price  pacifist.  Years  ago  my  mind  was  once  dark- 
ened very  badly  for  some  weeks  with  a  kind  of  fear 
and  distrust  of  life  through  a  sudden  unexpected 
encounter  one  tranquil  evening  with  a  drowned 


DO  THEY  REALLY  THINK  AT  ALL?      175 

body.  But  in  this  journey  in  Italy  and  France, 
although  I  have  had  glimpses  of  much  death  and 
seen  many  wounded  men,  I  have  had  no  really  hor- 
rible impressions  at  all.  That  side  of  the  business 
has,  I  think,  been  overwritten.  The  thing  that 
haunts  me  most  is  the  impression  of  a  prevalent 
relapse  into  extreme  untidiness,  of  a  universal  dis- 
comfort, of  fields,  and  of  ruined  houses  treated  dis- 
regardfully.  .  .  .  But  that  is  not  what  concerns  us 
now  in  this  discussion.  What  concerns  us  now  is 
the  fact  that  this  war  is  producing  spectacular  ef- 
fects so  tremendous  and  incidents  so  strange,  so 
remarkable,  so  vivid,  that  the  mind  forgets  both 
causes  and  consequences  and  simply  sits  down  to 
stare. 

For  example,  there  is  this  business  of  the  Zep- 
pelin raids  in  England.  It  is  a  supremely  silly 
business;  it  is  the  most  conclusive  demonstration 
of  the  intellectual  inferiority  of  the  German  to  the 
Western  European  that  it  should  ever  have  hap- 
pened. There  was  the  clearest  a  priori  case 
against  the  gas-bag.  I  remember  the  discussions 
ten  or  twelve  years  ago  in  which  it  was  established 
to  the  satisfaction  of  every  reasonable  man  that 
ultimately  the  "heavier  than  air"  machine  (as  we 
called  it  then)  must  fly  better  than  the  gas-bag, 
and  still  more  conclusively  that  no  gas-bag  was 
conceivable  that  could  hope  to  fight  and  defeat  aero- 


176      ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

planes.  Nevertheless  the  German,  with  that  dull 
faith  of  his  in  mere  "  Will,"  persisted  along  his 
line.  He  knew  instinctively  that  he  could  not 
produce  aviators  to  meet  the  Western  Euro- 
pean; all  his  social  instincts  made  him  cling  to 
the  idea  of  a  great  motherly,  an  almost  sowlike 
bag  of  wind  above  him.  At  an  enormous  waste  of 
resources  Germany  has  produced  these  futile  mon- 
sters, that  drift  in  the  darkness  over  England  pro- 
miscuously dropping  bombs  on  fields  and  houses. 
They  are  now  meeting  the  fate  that  was  demon- 
strably certain  ten  years  ago.  If  they  found  us 
unready  for  them  it  is  merely  that  we  were  unable 
to  imagine  so  idiotic  an  enterprise  would  ever  be 
seriously  sustained  and  persisted  in.  We  did  not 
believe  in  the  probability  of  Zeppelin  raids  any 
more  than  we  believed  that  Germany  would  force 
the  world  into  war.  It  was  a  thing  too  silly  to 
be  believed.  But  they  came  —  to  their  certain 
fate.  In  the  month  after  I  returned  from  France 
and  Italy,  no  less  than  four  of  these  fatuities  were 
exploded  and  destroyed  within  thirty  miles  of  my 
Essex  home.  .  .  .  There  in  chosen  phrases  you  have 
the  truth  about  these  things.  But  now  mark  the 
perversion  of  thought  due  to  spectacular  effect. 
I  find  over  the  Essex  countryside,  which  has  been 
for  more  than  a  year  and  a  half  a  highway  for 
Zeppelins,  a  new  and  curious  admiration  for  them 


DO  THEY  REALLY  THINK  AT  ALL?     177 

that  has  arisen  out  of  these  rery  disasters.  Pre- 
viously they  were  regarded  with  dislike  and  a  sort 
of  distrust,  as  one  might  regard  a  sneaking  neigh- 
bour who  left  his  footsteps  in  one's  garden  at  night. 
But  the  Zeppelins  of  Billericay  and  Potter's  Bar 
are  —  heroic  things.  ( The  Cuffley  one  came  down 
too  quickly,  and  the  fourth  one  which  came  down 
for  its  crew  to  surrender  is  despised.)  I  have 
heard  people  describe  the  two  former  with  eyes 
shining  with  enthusiasm. 

"  First,"  they  say,  "  you  saw  a  little  round  red 
glow  that  spread.  Then  you  saw  the  whole  Zep- 
pelin glowing.  Oh,  it  was  hcautiful!  Then  it 
began  to  turn  over  and  come  down,  and  it  flamed 
and  pieces  began  to  break  away.  And  then  down 
it  came,  leaving  flaming  pieces  all  up  the  sky.  At 
last  it  was  a  pillar  of  fire  eight  thousand  feet  high. 
.  .  .  Every  one  said, '  Ooooo ! '  And  then  some  one 
pointed  out  the  little  aeroplane  lit  up  by  the  flare 
—  such  a  leetle  thing  up  there  in  the  night!  It 
is  the  greatest  thing  I  have  ever  seen.  Oh!  the 
most  wonderful  —  most  wonderful !  " 

There  is  a  feeling  that  the  Germans  really  must 
after  all  be  a  splendid  people  to  provide  such  mag- 
nificent pyrotechnics. 

Some  people  in  London  the  other  day  were  pre- 
tending to  be  shocked  by  an  American  who  boasted 
he  had  been  in  "  two  hulli/  bombardments,"  but 


178       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

he  was  only  saying  what  every  one  feels  more  oi 
less.  We  are  at  a  spectacle  that  —  as  a  spectacle 
—  our  grandchildren  will  envy.  I  understand  now 
better  the  story  of  the  man  who  stared  at  the  sparks 
raining  up  from  his  own  house  as  it  burnt  in  the 
night  and  whispered,  "  Lovely  I    Lovely  I " 

The  spectacular  side  of  the  war  is  really  an  enor- 
mous distraction  from  thought.  And  against 
thought  there  also  fights  the  native  indolence  of 
the  human  mind.  The  human  mind,  it  seems,  was 
originally  developed  to  think  about  the  individual ; 
it  thinks  reluctantly  about  the  species.  It  takes 
refuge  from  that  sort  of  thing  if  it  possibly  can. 
And  so  the  second  great  preventive  of  clear  think- 
ing is  the  tranquillising  platitude. 

The  human  mind  is  an  instrument  very  easily 
fatigued.  Only  a  few  exceptions  go  on  thinking 
restlessly  —  to  the  extreme  exasperation  of  their 
neighbours.  The  normal  mind  craves  for  deci- 
sions, even  wrong  or  false  decisions  rather  than 
none.  It  clutches  at  comforting  falsehoods.  It 
loves  to  be  told,  "  There,  don't  you  worry.  That'll 
be  all  right.  That's  settled.''^  This  war  has  come 
as  an  almost  overwhelming  challenge  to  mankind. 
To  some  of  us  it  seems  as  if  it  were  the  Sphynx 
proffering  the  alternative  of  its  riddle  or  death. 
Yet  the  very  urgency  of  this  challenge  to  think 
seems  to  paralyse  the  critical  intelligence  of  very 


DO  THEY  REALLY  THINK  AT  ALL?     179 

many  people  altogether.  They  will  say,  "  This  war 
is  going  to  produce  enormous  changes  in  every- 
thing." They  will  then  subside  mentally  with  a 
feeling  of  having  covered  the  whole  ground  in  a 
thoroughly  safe  manner.  Or  they  will  adopt  an 
air  of  critical  aloofness.  They  will  say,  "  How  is 
it  possible  to  foretell  what  may  happen  in  this  tre- 
mendous sea  of  change?  "  And  then,  with  an  air 
of  superior  modesty,  they  will  go  on  doing  —  what- 
ever they  feel  inclined  to  do.  Many  others,  a  de- 
gree less  simple  in  their  methods,  will  take  some 
entirely  partial  aspect,  arrive  at  some  guesswork 
decision  upon  that,  and  then  behave  as  though  that 
met  every  question  we  have  to  face.  Or  they  will 
make  a  sort  of  admonitory  forecast  that  is  con- 
ditional upon  the  good  behaviour  of  other  people. 
"  Unless  the  Trade  Unions  are  more  reasonable," 
they  will  say.  Or,  "  Unless  the  shipping  interest 
is  grappled  with  and  controlled."  Or,  "  Unless 
England  wakes  up."  And  with  that  they  seem  to 
wash  their  hands  of  further  responsibility  for  the 
future. 

One  delightful  form  of  put-off  is  the  sage  remark, 
"  Let  us  finish  the  war  first,  and  then  let  us  ask 
what  is  going  to  happen  after  it."  One  likes  to 
think  of  the  beautiful  blank  day  after  the  signing 
of  peace  when  these  wise  minds  swing  round  to 
pick  up  their  deferred  problems.  .  .  . 


180       ITALY,  PRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

I  submit  that  a  man  has  not  done  his  duty  by 
himself  as  a  rational  creature  unless  he  has  formed 
an  idea  of  what  is  going  on,  as  one  complicated 
process,  until  he  has  formed  an  idea  sufficiently 
definite  for  him  to  make  it  the  basis  of  a  further 
idea,  which  is  his  own  relationship  to  that  process. 
He  must  have  some  notion  of  what  the  process  is 
going  to  do  to  him,  and  some  notion  of  what  he 
means  to  do,  if  he  can,  to  the  process.  That  is  to 
say,  he  must  not  only  have  an  idea  how  the  process 
is  going,  but  also  an  idea  of  how  he  wants  it  to  go. 
It  seems  so  natural  and  necessary  for  a  human 
brain  to  do  this  that  it  is  hard  to  suppose  that  every 
one  has  not  more  or  less  attempted  it.  But  few 
people,  in  Great  Britain  at  any  rate,  have  the  habit 
of  frank  expression,  and  when  people  do  not  seem 
to  have  made  out  any  of  these  things  for  themselves 
there  is  a  considerable  element  of  secretiveness  and 
inexpressiveness  to  be  allowed  for  before  we  decide 
that  they  have  not  in  some  sort  of  fashion  done 
so.  Still,  after  all  allowances  have  been  made, 
there  remains  a  vast  amount  of  jerry-built  and 
ready-made  borrowed  stuff  in  most  of  people's  phi- 
losophies of  the  war.  The  systems  of  authentic 
opinion  in  this  world  of  thought  about  the  war  are 
like  comparatively  rare  thin  veins  of  living  men- 
tality in  a  vast  world  of  dead  repetitions  and  echoed 
suggestions.     And  that  being  the  case,  it  is  quite 


DO  THEY  REALLY  THINK  AT  ALL?      181 

possible  that  history  after  the  war  like  history  be- 
fore the  war,  will  not  be  so  much  a  display  of  human 
will  and  purpose  as  a  resultant  of  human  vacil- 
lations, obstructions  and  inadvertencies.  We  shall 
still  be  in  a  drama  of  blind  forces  following  the 
line  of  least  resistance. 

One  of  the  people  who  is  often  spoken  of  as  if 
he  were  doing  an  enormous  amount  of  concentra- 
ted thinking  is  "  the  man  in  the  trenches."  We 
are  told  —  by  gentlemen  writing  for  the  most  part 
at  home  —  of  the  most  extraordinary  things  that 
are  going  on  in  those  devoted  brains,  how  they  are 
getting  new  views  about  the  duties  of  labour,  re- 
ligion, morality,  monarchy,  and  any  other  notions 
that  the  gentleman  at  home  happens  to  fancy  and 
wishes  to  push.  Now  that  is  not  at  all  the  impres- 
sion of  the  khaki  mentality  I  have  reluctantly  ac- 
cepted as  correct.  For  the  most  part  the  man  in 
khaki  is  up  against  a  round  of  tedious  immediate 
duties  that  forbid  consecutive  thought;  he  is 
usually  rather  crowded  and  not  very  comfortable. 
He  is  bored. 

The  real  horror  of  modern  war  when  all  is  said 
and  done  is  the  boredom.  To  get  killed  or  wounded 
may  be  unpleasant,  but  it  is  at  any  rate  interesting ; 
the  real  tragedy  is  in  the  desolated  fields,  the 
desolated  houses,  the  desolated  hours  and  days,  the 
bored  and  desolated  minds  that  hang  behind  the 


182       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

m^lee  and  just  outside  the  melee.  The  peculiar 
beastliness  of  the  German  crime  is  the  way  the 
German  war  cant  and  its  consequences  have  seized 
upon  and  paralysed  the  mental  movement  of 
Western  Europe.  Before  1914  war  was  theoreti- 
cally unpopular  in  every  European  country;  we 
thought  of  it  as  something  tragic  and  dreadful. 
Now  every  one  knows  by  experience  that  it  is  some- 
thing utterly  dirty  and  detestable.  We  thought 
it  was  the  Nemean  lion,  and  we  have  found  it  is  the 
Augean  stable.  But  being  bored  by  war  and  hating 
war  is  quite  unproductive  unless  you  are  thinking 
about  its  nature  and  causes  so  tJwroughly  that  you 
will  presently  he  able  to  take  hold  of  it  and  control 
it  and  end  it.  It  is  no  good  for  every  one  to  say 
unanimously,  "  We  will  have  no  more  war,"  unless 
you  have  thought  out  how  to  avoid  it,  and  mean  to 
bring  that  end  about.  It  is  as  if  every  one  said, 
"  We  will  have  no  more  catarrh,"  or  "  no  more 
flies  "  or  "  no  more  east  wind."  And  my  point  is 
that  the  immense  sorrows  at  home  in  every  Euro- 
pean country  and  the  vast  boredom  of  the  combat- 
ants are  probably  not  really  producing  any  effec- 
tive remedial  mental  action  at  all,  and  will  not 
do  so  unless  we  get  much  more  thoroughly  to  work 
upon  the  thinking-out  process. 

In  such  talks  as  I  could  get  with  men  close  up 
to  the  front  I  found  beyond  this  great  boredom 


DO  THEY  REALLY  THINK  AT  ALL?      183 

and  attempts  at  distraction  only  very  specialised 
talk  about  changes  in  the  future.  Men  were  keen 
upon  questions  of  army  promotion,  of  the  future 
conscription,  of  the  future  of  the  temporary  officer, 
upon  the  education  of  boys  in  relation  to  army 
needs.  But  the  war  itself  was  bearing  them  all 
upon  its  way,  as  unquestioned  and  uncontrolled 
as  if  it  were  the  planet  on  which  they  lived. 


II 


THE  YIELDING  PACIFIST  AND  THE 
CONSCIENTIOUS  OBJECTOR 

§  1 

Among  the  minor  topics  that  people  are  talking 
about  behind  the  western  fronts  is  the  psychology 
of  the  Yielding  Pacifist  and  the  Conscientious 
Objector.  Of  course,  we  are  all  pacifists  nowa- 
days; I  know  of  no  one  who  does  not  want  not 
only  to  end  this  war  but  to  put  an  end  to  war 
altogether,  except  those  blood-red  terrors,  Count 
Eeventlow,  Mr.  Leo  Maxse  —  how  he  does  it  on  a 
vegetarian  dietary  I  cannot  imagine!  —  and  our 
wild-eyed  desperadoes  of  The  Morning  Post.  But 
most  of  the  people  I  meet,  and  most  of  the  people 
I  met  on  my  journey,  are  pacifists  like  myself  who 
want  to  make  peace  by  beating  the  armed  man  un- 
til he  gives  in  and  admits  the  error  of  his  ways, 
disarming  him  and  reorganising  the  world  for  the 
forcible  suppression  of  military  adventures  in  the 
future.  They  want  belligerency  put  into  the  same 
category  as  burglary,  as  a  matter  for  forcible  sup- 
pression.    The  Yielding  Pacifist  who  will  accept 

184 


THE  YIELDING  PACIFIST  185 

any  sort  of  peace  and  the  Conscientious  Objector, 
who  will  not  fight  at  all,  are  not  of  that  opinion. 

Both  Italy  and  France  produce  parallel  types  to 
those  latter,  but  it  would  seem  that  in  each  case 
England  displays  the  finer  developments.  The 
Latin  mind  is  directer  than  the  English,  and  its 
standards  —  shall  I  say?  —  more  primitive;  it  gets 
more  directly  to  the  fact  that  here  are  meii  who 
will  not  fight.  And  it  is  less  charitable.  I  was 
asked  quite  a  number  of  times  for  the  English 
equivalent  of  an  emhusque.  "We  don't  general- 
ise," I  said,  "  we  treat  each  case  on  its  merits ! " 

One  interlocutor  near  Udine  was  exercised  by 
our  Italian  Eed  Cross  work. 

"  Here,"  he  said,  "  are  sixty  or  seventy  young 
Englishmen,  all  fit  for  military  service.  ...  Of 
course  they  go  under  fire,  but  it  is  not  like  being 
junior  officers  in  the  trenches.  Not  one  of  them 
has  been  killed  or  wounded." 

He  reflected.  "  One,  I  think,  has  been  decora- 
ted," he  said.  .  .  . 

My  French  and  Italian  are  only  for  very  rough 
common  jobs ;  when  it  came  to  explaining  the  Con- 
scientious Objector  sympathetically  they  broke 
down  badly.  I  had  to  construct  long  parentheti- 
cal explanations  of  our  antiquated  legislative  meth- 
ods to  show  how  it  was  that  the  "conscientious 
objector "   had  been   so  badly   defined.     The  for- 


186       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

eigner  does  not  understand  the  importance  of 
vague  definition  in  British  life.  "  Practically,  of 
course,  we  offered  to  exempt  any  one  who  conscien- 
tiously objected  to  fight  or  serve.  Then  the  Pacif- 
ist and  Pro-German  people  started  a  campaign  to 
enrol  objectors.  Of  course  every  shirker,  every 
coward  and  slacker  in  the  country  decided  at  once 
to  be  a  conscientious  objector.  Any  one  but  a 
British  legislator  could  have  foreseen  that.  Then 
we  started  Tribunals  to  wrangle  with  the  objectors 
about  their  ho7ia  fides.  Then  the  Pacifists  and  the 
Pro-Germans  issued  little  leaflets  and  started  cor- 
respondence courses  to  teach  people  exactly  how  to 
lie  to  the  Tribunals.  Trouble  about  the  freedom 
of  the  pamphleteer  followed.  I  had  to  admit  — 
it  has  been  rather  a  sloppy  business.  "  The  peo- 
ple who  made  the  law  knew  their  own  minds,  but 
we  English  are  not  an  expressive  people." 

These  are  not  easy  things  to  say  in  Elementary 
(and  slightly  Decayed)  French  or  in  Elementary 
and  Corrupt  Italian. 

"  But  why  do  people  support  the  sham  consci- 
entious objector  and  issue  leaflets  to  help  him  — 
when  there  is  so  much  big  work  clamouring  to 
be  done?" 

"That  "  I  said,  "is  the  Whig  tradition." 

Wh^-u  they  pressed  me  further,  I  said :  "  I  am 
really  the  questioner.     I  am  visiting  your  country. 


THE  YIELDING  PACIFIST  187 

and  you  have  to  tell  me  things.  It  is  not  right 
that  I  should  do  all  the  telling.  Tell  me  all  about 
Eomain  Eolland." 

And  also  I  pressed  them  about  the  official  social- 
ists in  Italy  and  the  Socialist  minority  in  France 
until  I  got  the  question  out  of  the  net  of  national 
comparisons  and  upon  a  broader  footing.  In  sev- 
eral conversations  we  began  to  work  out  in  general 
terms  the  psychology  of  those  people  who  were 
against  the  war.  But  usually  we  could  not  get  to 
that;  my  interlocutors  would  insist  upon  telling 
me  just  what  they  would  like  to  do  or  just  what 
they  would  like  to  see  done  to  stop-the-war  pacifists 
and  conscientious  objectors;  pleasant  rather  than 
fruitful  imaginative  exercises  from  which  I  could 
effect  no  more  than  platitudinous  uplifts. 

But  the  general  drift  of  such  talks  as  did  seem 
to  penetrate  the  question  was  this,  that  among  these 
stop-the-war  people  there  are  really  three  types. 
First  there  is  a  type  of  person  who  hates  violence 
and  the  infliction  of  pain  under  any  circumstances, 
and  who  has  a  mystical  belief  in  the  lightness  (and 
usually  in  the  efficacy)  of  non-resistance.  These 
are  generally  Christians,  and  then  their  cardinal 
text  is  the  instruction  to  "  turn  the  other  cheek." 
Often  they  are  Quakers.  If  they  are  consistent 
they  are  vegetarians  and  wear  Lederloa  boots. 
They  do  not  desire  police  protection  for  their  goods. 


188       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

They  stand  aloof  from  all  the  force  and  conflict 
of  life.  They  have  always  done  so.  This  is  an  un- 
derstandable and  resi)ectable  type.  It  has  numer- 
ous Hindu  equivalents.  It  is  a  type  that  finds  little 
difficulty  about  exemptions  —  provided  the  indi- 
vidual has  not  been  too  recently  converted  to  his 
present  habits.  But  it  is  not  the  prevalent  type 
in  stop-the-war  circles.  Such  genuine  ascetics  do 
not  number  more  than  a  thousand  or  so,  in  all  three 
of  our  western  allied  countries.  The  mass  of  the 
stop-the-war  people  is  made  up  of  quite  other  ele- 
ments. 

§  2 

In  the  complex  structure  of  the  modern  com- 
munity there  are  two  groups  or  strata  or  pockets 
in  which  the  impulse  of  social  obligation,  the  gre- 
garious sense  of  a  common  welfare,  is  at  its  lowest ; 
one  of  these  is  the  class  of  the  Resentful  Employe, 
the  class  of  people  who,  without  explanation,  ade- 
quate preparation  or  any  chance,  have  been  shoved 
at  an  early  age  into  uncongenial  work  and  never 
given  a  chance  to  escape,  and  the  other  is  the  class 
of  people  with  small  fixed  incomes  or  with  small 
salaries  earnt  by  routine  work,  or  half  independ- 
ent people  practising  some  minor  artistic  or  liter- 
ary craft,  who  have  led  uneventful,  irresponsible 
lives  from  their  youth  uj),  and  never  came  at  any 


THE  YIELDING  PACIFIST  189 

point  into  relations  of  service  to  the  state.  This 
latter  class  was  more  difficult  to  define  than  the 
former  —  because  it  is  more  various  within  itself. 
My  French  friends  wanted  to  talk  of  the  "  Psycho- 
logy of  the  Rentier."  I  was  for  such  untransla- 
table phrases  as  the  "  Genteel  Whig/'  or  the  "  Don- 
nish Liberal."  But  I  lit  up  an  Italian  —  he  is 
a  Milanese  manufacturer  —  with  "  these  Floren- 
tine English  who  would  keep  Italy  in  a  glass  case." 
*'  I  know,"  he  said.  Before  I  go  on  to  expand 
this  congenial  theme,  let  me  deal  first  with  the 
Resentful  Employe,  who  is  a  much  more  consid- 
erable, and  to  me  a  much  more  sympathetic  figure, 
in  European  affairs.  I  began  life  myself  as  a 
Resentful  Employe.  By  the  extremest  good  luck 
I  have  got  my  mind  and  spirit  out  of  the  distortions 
of  that  cramping  beginning,  but  I  can  still  recall 
even  the  anger  of  those  old  days. 

He  becomes  an  employe  between  thirteen  and 
fifteen ;  he  is  made  to  do  work  he  does  not  like  for 
no  other  purpose  that  he  can  see  except  the  profit 
and  glory  of  a  fortunate  person  called  his  employer, 
behind  whom  stand  church  and  state,  blessing  and 
upholding  the  relationship.  He  is  not  allowed  to 
feel  that  he  has  any  share  whatever  in  the  employ- 
er's business,  or  that  any  end  is  served  but  the 
employer's  profit.  He  cannot  see  that  the  emjjloyer 
acknowledges    any    duty    to    the    state.     Neither 


190       ITALY,  FRANCE  AKD  BRITAIN 

church  nor  state  seem  to  insist  that  the  employer 
has  any  public  function.  At  no  point  does  the 
employe  come  into  a  clear  relationship  of  mutual 
obligation  with  the  state.  There  does  not  seem 
to  be  any  way  out  for  the  employe  from  a  life 
spent  in  this  subordinate,  toilsome  relationship. 
He  feels  put  upon  and  cheated  out  of  life.  He 
is  without  honour.  If  he  is  a  person  of  ability  or 
stubborn  temper  he  struggles  out  of  his  position; 
if  he  is  a  kindly  and  generous  person  he  blames 
his  "  luck  "  and  does  his  work  and  lives  his  life 
as  cheerfully  as  possible  —  and  so  live  the  bulk 
of  our  amazing  European  workers ;  if  he  is  a  being 
of  great  magnanimity  he  is  content  to  serve  for 
the  ultimate  good  of  the  race;  if  he  has  imagina- 
tion he  says,  "  Things  will  not  always  be  like  this," 
and  becomes  a  socialist  or  a  guild  socialist,  and 
tries  to  educate  the  employer  to  a  sense  of  recip- 
rocal duty ;  but  if  he  is  too  human  for  any  of  these 
things,  then  he  begins  to  despise  and  hate  the  em- 
ployer and  the  system  that  made  him.  He  wants 
to  hurt  them.  Upon  that  hate  it  is  easy  to  trade. 
A  certain  section  of  what  is  called  the  Socialist 
press  and  the  Socialist  literature  in  Europe  is  no 
doubt  great-minded;  it  seeks  to  carve  a  better 
world  out  of  the  present.  But  much  of  it  is  social- 
ist only  in  name.  Its  spirit  is  Anarchistic.  Its 
real  burthen  is  not  construction  but  grievance;  it 


THE  YIELDING  PACIFIST  191 

tells  the  bitter  tale  of  the  employe,  it  feeds  and 
organises  his  malice,  it  schemes  annoyance  and  in- 
Jury  for  the  hated  employer.  The  state  and  the 
order  of  the  world  is  confounded  with  the  capi- 
talist. Before  the  war  the  popular  so-called  soci- 
alist press  reeked  with  the  cant  of  rebellion,  the 
cant  of  any  sort  of  rebellion.  "  I'm  a  rebel,"  was 
the  silly  boast  of  the  young  disciple.  "  Spoil 
something,  set  fire  to  something,"  was  held  to  be 
the  proper  text  for  any  girl  or  lad  of  spirit.  And 
this  blind  discontent  carried  on  into  the  war. 
While  on  the  one  hand  a  great  rush  of  men  poured 
into  the  army  saying,  "  Thank  God !  we  can  serve 
our  country  at  last  instead  of  some  beastly  prof- 
iteer," a  sourer  remnant,  blind  to  the  greater  is- 
sues of  the  war,  clung  to  the  reasonless  proposition, 
"  the  state  is  only  for  the  Capitalist.  This  war  is 
got  up  by  Capitalists.  Whatever  has  to  be  done 
—  we  are  rebels/^ 

Such  a  typical  paper  as  the  British  Labour 
Leader,  for  example,  may  be  read  in  vain,  number 
after  number,  for  any  sound  and  sincere  construc- 
tive proposal.  It  is  a  prolonged  scream  of  extreme 
individualism,  a  monotonous  repetition  of  incoher- 
ent discontent  with  authority,  with  direction,  with 
union,  with  the  European  effort.  It  wants  to  do 
nothing.  It  just  wants  effort  to  stop  —  even  at 
the  price  of  German  victory.     If  the  whole  fabric 


192       ITALY,  FEANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

of  society  in  western  Europe  were  to  be  handed 
over  to  those  i)seudo-socialists  to-morrow,  to  be  ad- 
ministered for  the  common  good,  they  would  fly 
the  task  in  terror.  They  would  make  excuses  and 
refuse  the  undertaking.  They  do  not  want  the 
world  to  go  right.  The  very  idea  of  the  world 
going  right  does  not  exist  in  their  minds.  They 
are  embodied  discontent  and  hatred,  making  trou- 
ble, and  that  is  all  they  are.  They  want  to  be 
"  rebels  " —  to  be  admired  as  "  rebels." 

That  is  the  true  psychology  of  the  Resentful  Em- 
ploye. He  is  a  de-socialised  man.  His  sense  of 
the  State  has  been  destroyed. 

The  Resentful  Employes  are  the  outcome  of  our 
social  injustices.  They  are  the  failures  of  our  so- 
cial and  educational  systems.  We  may  regret  their 
pitiful  degradation,  we  may  exonerate  them  from 
blame;  none  the  less  they  are  a  pitiful  crew.  I 
have  seen  the  hardship  of  the  trenches,  the  gay  and 
gallant  wounded.  I  do  a  little  understand  what 
our  soldiers,  officers,  and  men  alike  have  endured 
and  done.  And  though  I  know  I  ought  to  allow  for 
all  that  I  have  stated,  I  cannot  regard  these  con- 
scientious objectors  with  anything  but  contempt. 
Into  my  house  there  pours  a  dismal  literature  re- 
hearsing the  hardships  of  these  men  who  set  up  to 
be  martyrs  for  liberty ;  So  and  So,  brave  hero,  has 
been  sworn  at  —  positively  sworn  at  by  a  corporal ; 


THE  YIELDING  PACIFIST  193 

a  nasty  roiigli  man  came  into  the  cell  of  So  and  So 
and  dropped  several  h's ;  So  and  So,  refusing  to  un- 
dress and  wash,  has  been  undressed  and  washed, 
and  soap  was  rubbed  into  his  eyes  —  perhaps  pur- 
posely ;  the  food  and  accommodation  are  not  of  the 
best  class;  the  doctors  in  attendance  seem  hasty; 
So  and  So  was  put  into  a  damp  bed  and  has  got  a 
nasty  cold.  Then  I  recall  a  jolly  vanload  of 
wounded  men  I  saw  out  there.  .  .  . 

But  after  all,  we  must  be  just.  A  Church  and 
State  that  permitted  these  people  to  be  thrust  into 
dreary  employment  in  their  early  teens,  without 
hope  or  pride,  deserves  such  citizens  as  these.  The 
marvel  is  that  there  are  so  few.  There  is  a  poor 
thousand  or  so  of  these  hoi)eless,  resentment-i)oi- 
soned  creatures  in  Great  Britain.  Against  five 
willing  millions.  The  Allied  countries,  I  submit, 
have  not  got  nearly  all  the  conscientious  objectors 
they  deserve. 

§  3 

If  the  Resentful  Employe  provides  the  emotional 
impulse  of  the  resisting  pacifist,  whose  horizon  is 
bounded  by  his  one  passionate  desire  that  the  par- 
ticular social  system  that  has  treated  him  so  ill 
should  collapse  and  give  in,  and  its  leaders  and 
rulers  be  humiliated  and  destroyed,  the  intellectual 


194       ITALY,  FKANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

direction  of  a  mischievous  pacificism  comes  from  an 
entirely  different  class. 

The  Genteel  Whig,  though  he  differs  very  widely 
in  almost  every  other  respect  from  the  Resentful 
Employ^,  has  this  much  in  common,  that  he  has 
never  been  drawn  into  the  whirl  of  the  collective 
life  in  any  real  and  assimilative  fashion.  This  is 
what  is  the  matter  with  both  of  them.  He  is  a  lit- 
tle loose  shy  independent  person.  Except  for  eat- 
ing and  drinking  —  in  moderation,  he  has  never 
done  anything  real  from  the  day  he  was  born.  He 
has  frequently  not  even  faced  the  common  challenge 
of  matrimony.  Still  more  frequently  is  he  child- 
less, or  the  daring  parent  of  one  peculiar  child.  He 
has  never  traded  nor  manufactured.  He  has  drawn 
his  dividends  or  his  salary  with  an  entire  uncon- 
sciousness of  any  obligations  to  policemen  or  navy 
for  these  punctual  payments.  Probably  he  has 
never  ventured  even  to  re-invest  his  little  legacy. 
He  is  acutely  aware  of  possessing  an  exceptionally 
fine  intelligence,  but  he  is  entirely  unconscious  of  a 
fundamental  unreality.  Nothing  has  ever  occurred 
to  him  to  make  him  ask  why  the  mass  of  men 
were  either  not  possessed  of  his  security  or  discon- 
tented with  it.  The  impulses  that  took  his  school 
friends  out  upon  all  sorts  of  odd  feats  and  adven- 
tures struck  him  as  needless.  As  he  grew  up  he 
turned  with  an  equal  distrust  from  passion  or  am- 


THE  YIELDING  PACIFIST  195 

bition.  His  friends  went  out  after  love,  after  ad- 
venture, after  power,  after  knowledge,  after  this  or 
that  desire,  and  became  men.  But  he  noted  merely 
that  they  became  fleshly,  that  effort  strained  them, 
that  they  were  sometimes  angry  or  violent  or 
heated.  He  could  not  but  feel  that  theirs  were 
vulgar  experiences,  and  he  sought  some  finer  exer- 
cise for  his  exceptional  quality.  He  pursued  art  or 
philosophy  or  literature  upon  their  more  esoteric 
levels  and  realised  more  and  more  the  general  vul- 
garity and  coarseness  of  the  world  about  him,  and 
his  own  detachment.  The  vulgarity  and  crudity  of 
the  things  nearest  him  impressed  him  most;  the 
dreadful  insincerity  of  the  Press,  the  meretricious- 
ness  of  success,  the  loudness  of  the  rich,  the  base- 
ness of  the  common  people  in  his  own  land.  The 
world  overseas  had  by  comparison  a  certain 
glamour.  Except  that  when  you  said  "  United 
States  "  to  him,  he  would  draw  in  the  air  sharply 
between  his  teeth  and  beg  you  not  to.  .  .  . 

Nobody  took  him  by  the  collar  and  shook  him. 

If  our  world  had  considered  the  advice  of  Wil- 
liam James  and  insisted  upon  national  service  from 
every  one,  national  service  in  the  drains  or  the  na- 
tionalised mines  or  the  nationalised  deep-sea  fish- 
eries if  not  in  the  army  or  navy,  we  should  not  have 
had  any  such  men.  If  it  had  insisted  that  wealth 
and  property  are  no  more  than  a  trust  for  the  pub- 


196       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

lie  benefit,  we  should  have  had  no  genteel  indis- 
pensables.  These  discords  in  our  national  unanim- 
ity are  the  direct  consequence  of  our  bad  social 
organisation.  We  permit  the  profiteer  and  the 
usurer;  they  evoke  the  response  of  the  Reluctant 
Employe,  and  the  inheritor  of  their  wealth  becomes 
the  Genteel  Whig. 

But  that  is  by  the  way.  It  was  of  course  natural 
and  inevitable  that  the  German  onslaught  upon  Bel- 
gium and  civilisation  generally  should  strike  these 
recluse  minds  not  as  a  monstrous  ugly  wickedness 
to  be  resisted  and  overcome  at  any  cost,  but  merely 
as  a  nerve-racking  experience.  Guns  were  going 
off  on  both  sides.  The  Genteel  Whig  was  chiefly 
conscious  of  a  repulsive  vast  excitement  all  about 
him,  in  which  many  people  did  inelegant  and  irra- 
tional things.  They  waved  flags  —  nasty  little 
flags.  This  child^  of  the  ages,  this  last  fruit  of  the 
gigantic  and  tragic  tree  of  life,  could  no  more  than 
stick  its  fingers  in  its  ears  and  say,  "  Oh,  please,  do 
all  stop !  "  and  then  as  the  strain  grew  intenser  and 
intenser  set  itself  with  feeble  pawings  now  to  clam- 
ber "  Au-dessus  de  la  Melee,"  and  now  to  —  in  some 
weak  way  —  stop  the  conflict.  ( "  Au-dessus  de  la 
Melee  " —  as  the  man  said  when  they  asked  him 
where  he  was  when  the  bull  gored  his  sister. )  The 
efforts  to  stop  the  conflict  at  any  price,  even  at  the 
price  of  entire  submission  to  the  German  Will,  grew 


THE  YIELDING  PACIFIST  197 

more  urgent  as  the  necessity  that  every  one  should 
help  against  the  German  Thing  grew  more  mani- 
fest. 

Of  all  the  strange  freaks  of  distressed  thinking 
that  this  war  has  produced,  the  freaks  of  the  Gen- 
teel Whig  have  been  among  the  most  remarkable. 
With  an  air  of  profound  wisdom  he  returns  per- 
petually to  his  proposition  that  there  are  faults  on 
both  sides.  To  say  that  is  his  conception  of  impar- 
tiality. I  suppose  that  if  a  bull  gored  his  sister  he 
would  say  that  there  were  faults  on  both  sides;  his 
sister  ought  not  to  have  strayed  into  the  field,  she 
was  wearing  a  red  hat  of  a  highly  provocative  type ; 
she  ought  to  have  been  a  cow  and  then  everything 
would  have  been  different.  In  the  face  of  the  his- 
tory of  the  last  forty  years,  the  Genteel  Whig  strug- 
gles persistently  to  minimise  the  German  outrage 
upon  civilisation  and  to  find  excuses  for  Germany. 
He  does  this,  not  because  he  has  any  real  passion 
for  falsehood,  but  because  by  training,  circum- 
stance, and  disposition  he  is  passionately  averse 
from  action  with  the  vulgar  majority  and  from  self- 
sacrifice  in  a  common  cause,  and  because  he  finds  in 
the  justification  of  Germany  and,  failing  that,  in 
the  blackening  of  the  Allies  to  an  equal  blackness, 
one  line  of  defence  against  the  wave  of  impulse  that 
threatens  to  submerge  his  private  self.  But  when 
at  last  that  line  is  forced  he  is  driven  back  upon 


198       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

others  equally  extraordinary.  You  can  often  find 
simultaneously  in  the  same  Pacifist  paper,  and 
sometimes  even  in  the  utterances  of  the  same  writer, 
two  entirely  incompatible  statements.  The  first  is 
that  Germany  is  so  invincible  that  it  is  useless  to 
prolong  the  war  since  no  effort  of  the  Allies  is  likely 
to  produce  any  material  improvement  in  their  posi- 
tion, and  the  second  is  that  Germany  is  so  thor- 
oughly beaten  that  she  is  now  ready  to  abandon 
militarism  and  make  terms  and  compensations  en- 
tirely acceptable  to  the  countries  she  has  forced 
into  war.  And  when  finally  facts  are  produced  to 
establish  the  truth  that  Germany,  though  still 
largely  wicked  and  impenitent,  is  being  slowly  and 
conclusively  beaten  by  the  sanity,  courage  and  per- 
sistence of  the  Allied  common  men,  then  the  Gen- 
teel Whig  retorts  with  his  last  defensive  absurdity. 
He  invents  a  national  psychology  for  Germany. 
Germany,  he  invents,  loves  us  and  wants  to  be  our 
dearest  friend.  Germany  has  always  loved  us. 
The  Germans  are  a  loving,  unenvious  people.  They 
have  been  a  little  misled  —  but  nice  people  do  not 
insist  upon  that  fact.  But  beware  of  beating  Ger- 
many, beware  of  humiliating  Germany ;  then  indeed 
trouble  will  come.  Germany  will  begin  to  dislike 
us.  She  will  plan  a  revenge.  Turning  aside  from 
her  erstwhile  innocent  career,  she  may  even  think 
of  hate.     What  are  our  obligations  to  France,  Italy, 


THE  YIELDING  PACIFIST  199 

Serbia,  and  Russia,  what  is  the  happiness  of  a  few 
thousands  of  the  Herero,  a  few  millions  of  Bel- 
gians —  whose  numbers  moreover  are  constantly  di- 
minishing —  when  we  weigh  them  against  the  dan- 
ger, the  most  terrible  danger,  of  incurring  perma- 
nent German  hostility?  .  .  . 

A  Frenchman  I  talked  to  knew  better  than  that. 
"  What  will  happen  to  Germany,"  I  asked,  "  if  we 
are  able  to  do  so  to  her  and  so;  would  she  take  to 
dreams  of  a  Revanche  f 

"  She  will  take  to  Anglomania,"  he  said,  and 
added  after  a  flash  of  reflection,  "  In  the  long  run 
it  will  be  the  worse  for  you." 


Ill 

THE  RELIGIOUS  REVIVAL 


One  of  the  indisputable  things  about  the  war  so 
far  as  Britain  and  France  goes  —  and  I  have  rea- 
son to  believe  that  on  a  lesser  scale  things  are  simi- 
lar in  Italy  —  is  that  it  has  produced  a  very  great 
volume  of  religious  thought  and  feeling.  About 
Russia  in  these  matters  we  hear  but  little  at  the 
present  time,  but  one  guesses  at  parallelism.  Peo- 
ple habitually  religious  have  been  stirred  to  new 
depths  of  reality  and  sincerity,  and  people  are  think- 
ing of  religion  who  never  thought  of  religion  before. 
But  as  I  have  already  pointed  out,  thinking  and 
feeling  about  a  matter  is  of  no  permanent  value  un- 
less something  is  thought  out,  unless  there  is  a 
change  of  boundary  or  relationship,  and  it  is  an 
altogether  different  question  to  ask  whether  any 
definite  change  is  resulting  from  this  universal  fer- 
ment. If  it  is  not  doing  so,  then  the  sleeper  merely 
dreams  a  dream  that  he  will  forget  again.  .  .  . 

Now  in  no  sort  of  general  popular  mental  activity 
is  there  so  much  froth  and  waste  as  in  religious  ex- 

200 


THE  RELIGIOUS  REVIVAL  201 

citements.  This  lias  been  the  case  in  all  periods  of 
religious  revival.  The  peojple  who  are  rather  im- 
pressed, who  for  a  few  days  or  weeks  take  to  read- 
ing their  Bibles  or  going  to  a  new  place  of  worship 
or  praying  or  fasting  or  being  kind  and  unselfish, 
is  always  enormous  in  relation  to  the  number  whose 
lives  are  permanently  changed.  The  effort  needed 
if  a  contemporary  is  to  blow  off  the  froth,  is  always 
very  considerable. 

Among  the  froth  that  I  would  blow  off  is  I  think 
most  of  the  tremendous  eft"orts  being  made  in  Eng- 
land by  the  Anglican  church  to  attract  favourable 
attention  to  itself  apropos  of  the  war.  I  came  back 
from  my  visit  to  the  Somme  battlefields  to  find  the 
sylvan  peace  of  Essex  invaded  by  a  number  of  ladies 
in  blue  dresses  adorned  with  large  white  crosses, 
who,  regardless  of  the  present  shortage  of  nurses, 
were  visiting  every  home  in  the  place  on  some  mis- 
sion of  invitation  whose  details  remained  obscure. 
So  far  as  I  was  able  to  elucidate  this  project,  it  was 
in  the  nature  of  a  magic  incantation ;  a  satisfactory 
end  of  the  war  was  to  be  brought  about  by  con- 
vergent prayer  and  religious  assiduities.  The  mis- 
sion was  shy  of  dealing  with  me  personally,  al- 
though as  a  lapsed  communicant  I  should  have 
thought  myself  a  particularly  hopeful  field  for 
Anglican  effort,  and  it  came  to  my  wife  and  myself 
merely  for  our  permission  and  countenance  in  an 


202       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

appeal  to  our  domestic  assistants.  My  wife  con- 
sulted the  household;  it  seemed  very  anxious  to 
escape  from  that  appeal,  and  as  I  respect  Christi- 
anity sufficiently  to  detest  the  identification  of  its 
services  with  magic  processes,  the  mission  retired 
—  civilly  repulsed.  But  the  incident  aroused  an 
uneasy  curiosity  in  my  mind  with  regard  to  the 
general  trend  of  Anglican  teaching  and  Anglican 
activities  at  the  present  time.  The  trend  of  my 
enquiries  is  to  discover  the  church  much  more  in- 
coherent and  much  less  religious  —  in  any  decent 
sense  of  the  word  —  than  I  had  supposed  it  to  be. 

Organisation  is  the  life  of  material  and  the  death 
of  mental  and  spiritual  processes.  There  could  be 
no  more  melancholy  exemplification  of  this  than  the 
spectacle  of  the  Anglican  and  Catholic  churches  at 
the  present  time,  one  using  the  tragic  stresses  of  the 
war  mainly  for  pew-rent  touting,  and  the  other 
paralysed  by  its  Austrian  and  South  German  po- 
litical connections  from  any  clear  utterance  upon 
the  moral  issues  of  the  war.  Through  the  opening 
phases  of  the  war  the  Established  Church  of  Eng- 
land was  inconspicuous ;  this  is  no  longer  the  case, 
but  it  may  be  doubted  whether  the  change  is  alto- 
gether to  its  advantage.  To  me  this  is  a  very  great 
disappointment.  I  have  always  had  a  very  high 
opinion  of  the  intellectual  value  of  the  leading  di- 
vines  of   both   the   Anglican   and    Catholic    com- 


THE  RELIGIOUS  REVIVAL  203 

munions.  The  self-styled  Intelligenzia  of  Great 
Britain  is  all  too  prone  to  sneer  at  their  equipment ; 
but  I  do  not  see  how  any  impartial  person  can  deny 
that  Father  Vaughan  is  in  mental  energy,  vigour 
of  expression,  richness  of  thought  and  variety  of 
information  fully  the  equal  of  such  an  influential 
lay  publicist  as  Mr.  Horatio  Bottomley.  One 
might  search  for  a  long  time  among  prominent  lay- 
men to  find  the  equal  of  the  Bishop  of  London. 
Nevertheless  it  is  impossible  to  conceal  the  impres- 
sion of  tawdriness  that  this  latter  gentleman's  work 
as  head  of  the  National  Mission  has  left  upon  my 
mind.  Attired  in  khaki  he  has  recently  been 
preaching  in  the  open  air  to  the  people  of  London 
upon  Tower  Hill,  Piccadilly,  and  other  conspicuous 
places.  Obsessed  as  I  am  by  the  humanities,  and 
impressed  as  I  have  always  been  by  the  inferiority 
of  material  to  moral  facts,  I  would  willingly  have 
exchanged  the  sight  of  two  burning  Zeppelins  for 
this  spectacle  of  ecclesiastical  fervour.  But  as  it 
is,  I  am  obliged  to  trust  to  newspaper  reports  and 
the  descriptions  of  hearers  and  eye-witnesses. 
They  leave  but  little  doubt  of  the  regrettable  levity 
and  superficiality  of  the  bishop's  utterances. 

We  have  a  multitude  of  people  chastened  by 
losses,  ennobled  by  a  common  effort,  needing  sup- 
port in  that  effort,  perplexed  by  the  reality  of  evil 
and  cruelty,  questioning  and  seeking  after  God. 


204       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

What  does  the  National  Mission  offer?  On  Tower 
Hill  the  Bishop  seems  to  have  been  chiefly  busy 
with  a  wrangling  demonstration  that  ten  thousand 
a  year  is  none  too  big  a  salary  for  a  man  subject  to 
such  demands  and  expenses  as  his  see  involves.  So 
far  from  making  anything  out  of  his  see  he  was,  he 
declared,  two  thousand  a  year  to  the  bad.  Some 
day  when  the  church  has  studied  efficiency,  I  sup- 
pose that  bishops  will  have  the  leisure  to  learn 
something  about  the  general  state  of  opinion  and 
education  in  their  dioceses.  The  Bishop  of  Lon- 
don was  evidently  unaware  of  the  almost  automatic 
response  of  the  sharp  socialists  among  his  hearers. 
Their  first  enquiry  would  be  to  learn  how  he  came 
by  that  mysterious  extra  two  thousand  a  year  with 
which  he  supplemented  his  stipend.     How  did  he 

earn  that?    And  if  he  didn't  earn  it !     And 

secondly  they  would  probably  have  pointed  out  to 
him  that  his  standard  of  housing,  clothing,  diet 
and  entertaining  was  probably  a  little  higher  than 
theirs.  It  is  really  no  proof  of  virtuous  purity  that 
a  man's  expenditure  exceeds  his  income.  And 
finally  some  other  of  his  hearers  w^re  left  unsatis- 
fied by  his  silence  with  regard  to  the  current  pro- 
posal to  pool  all  clerical  stipends  for  the  common 
purposes  of  the  church.  It  is  a  reasonable  pro- 
posal, and  if  bishops  must  dispute  about  stipends 
instead  of  preaching  the  kingdom  of  God,  then  they 


THE  RELIGIOUS  REVIVAL  205 

are  bound  to  face  it.  Tlie  sooner  they  do  so,  the 
more  graceful  will  the  act  be.  From  these  personal 
apologetics  the  bishop  took  up  the  question  of  the 
exemption,  at  the  request  of  the  bishops,  of  the 
clergy  from  military  service.  It  is  one  of  our  con- 
trasts with  French  conditions  —  and  it  is  all  to  the 
disadvantage  of  the  British  churches. 

In  his  Piccadilly  contribution  to  the  National 
Mission  of  Repentance  and  Hope  the  bishop  did  not 
talk  politics  but  sex.  He  gave  his  hearers  the  sort 
of  stuff  that  is  handed  out  so  freely  by  the  Cinema 
Theatres,  White  Slave  Traffic  talk,  denunciations 
of  "Night  Hawks" — whatever  "Night  Hawks" 
may  be  —  and  so  on.  On  this  or  another  occasion 
the  bishop  —  he  boasts  that  he  himself  is  a  healthy 
bachelor  —  lavished  his  eloquence  upon  the  Fall  in 
the  Birth  Rate,  and  the  duty  of  all  married  people, 
from  paupers  upward,  to  have  children  persistently. 
Now  sex  like  diet  is  a  department  of  conduct  and  a 
very  important  department,  but  it  isn't  religion! 
The  world  is  distressed  by  international  disorder, 
by  the  monstrous  tragedy  of  war;  these  little  hot 
talks  about  indulgence  and  begetting  have  about  as 
much  to  do  with  the  vast  issues  that  concern  us  as, 
let  us  say,  a  discussion  of  the  wickedness  of  eating 
very  new  and  indigestible  bread.  It  is  talking 
round  and  about  the  essential  issue.  It  is  fogging 
the  essential  issue,  which  is  the  forgotten  and  neg- 


206       ITALY,  PRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

lected  kingship  of  God.  The  sin  that  is  stirring  the 
souls  of  men  is  the  sin  of  this  war.  It  is  the  sin  of 
national  egotism  and  the  devotion  of  men  to  loyal- 
ties, ambitions,  sects,  churches,  feuds,  aggressions, 
and  divisions  that  are  an  outrage  upon  God's  uni- 
versal kingdom. 


§  2 

The  common  clergy  of  France,  sharing  the  mili- 
tary obligations  and  the  food  and  privations  of 
their  fellow  parishioners,  contrast  very  vividly  with 
the  home-staying  types  of  the  ministries  of  the  vari- 
ous British  churches.  I  met  and  talked  to  several. 
Near  Frise  there  were  some  barge  gun-boats  —  they 
have  since  taken  their  place  in  the  fighting  but  then 
they  were  a  surprise  —  and  the  men  had  been  very 
anxious  to  have  their  craft  visited  and  seen.  The 
priest  who  came  after  our  party  to  see  if  he  could 
still  arrange  that,  had  been  decorated  for  gallantry. 
Of  course  the  English  too  have  their  gallant  chap- 
lains, but  they  are  men  of  the  officer  caste,  they  are 
just  young  officers  with  peculiar  collars;  not  men 
among  men,  as  are  the  French  priests. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  behaviour  of  the 
French  priests  in  this  war  has  enormously  dimin- 
ished anti-clerical  bitterness  in  France.  There  can 
be  no  doubt  that  France  is  far  more  a  religious 


THE  RELIGIOUS  REVIVAL  207 

country  than  it  was  before  the  war.  But  if  you  ask 
whether  that  means  any  return  to  the  church,  any 
reinstatement  of  the  church,  the  answer  is  a  doubt- 
ful one.  Religion  and  the  simple  priest  are 
stronger  in  France  to-day;  the  church,  I  think,  is 
weaker. 

I  trench  on  no  theological  discussion  when  I  re- 
cord the  unfavourable  impression  made  upon  all 
western  Europe  by  the  failure  of  the  Holy  Father 
to  pronounce  definitely  upon  the  rights  and  wrongs 
of  the  war.  The  church  has  abrogated  its  right  of 
moral  judgment.  Such  at  least  seemed  to  be  the 
opinion  of  the  Frenchmen  with  whom  I  discussed 
a  remarkable  interview  with  Cardinal  Gasparri 
that  I  found  one  morning  in  Le  Journal. 

It  was  not  the  sort  of  interview  to  win  the  hearts 
of  men  who  were  ready  to  give  their  lives  to  set 
right  what  they  believe  to  be  the  greatest  outrage 
that  has  ever  been  inflicted  upon  Christendom,  that 
is  to  say  the  forty-three  years  of  military  prepara- 
tion and  of  diplomacy  by  threats  that  culminated 
in  the  ultimatum  to  Serbia,  the  invasion  of  Belgium 
and  the  murder  of  the  Vise  villagers.  It  was 
adorned  with  a  large  portrait  of  "  Benoit  XV.," 
looking  grave  and  discouraging  over  his  spectacles, 
and  the  headlines  insisted  it  was  "La  Pensee  da 
Pape."  Cross-heads  sufficiently  indicated  the  gen- 
eral tone.     One  read: 


208       ITALY,  FKANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

^'  Le  Saint  Siege  impartial.  .  .  . 
Au-dessus  de  la  hataille.  .  .  ." 

The  good  Cardinal  would  have  made  a  good  law- 
yer. He  had  as  little  to  say  about  God  and  the  gen- 
eral righteousness  of  things  as  the  Bishop  of  Lon- 
don, But  he  got  in  some  smug  reminders  of  the 
severance  of  diplomatic  relations  with  the  Vatican. 
Perhaps  now  France  will  be  wiser.  He  pointed  out 
that  the  Holy  See  in  its  Consistorial  Allocution  of 
January  22nd,  1915,  invited  the  belligerents  to  ob- 
serve the  laws  of  war.  Could  anything  more  be 
done  than  that?  Oh !  —  in  the  general  issue  of  the 
war,  if  you  want  a  judgment  on  the  war  as  a  whole, 
how  is  it  possible  for  the  Vatican  to  decide? 
Surely  the  French  know  that  excellent  principle  of 
justice,  Audiatur  et  altera  pars,  and  how  under  ex- 
isting circumstances  can  the  Vatican  do  that?  .  .  . 
The  Vatican  is  cut  off  from  communication  with 
Austria  and  Germany.  The  Vatican  has  been  de- 
prived of  its  temporal  power  and  local  independence 
(another  neat  point).  .  .  . 

So  France  is  bowed  out.  When  peace  is  restored 
the  Vatican  will  perhaps  be  able  to  enquire  if  there 
was  a  big  German  army  in  1914,  if  German  diplo- 
macy was  aggressive  from  1875  onward,  if  Bel- 
gium was  invaded  unrighteously,  if  (Catholic)  Aus- 
tria forced  the  pace  upon   (non-Catholic)   Russia. 


THE  KELIGIOUS  REVIVAL  209 

But  now  —  now  the  Holy  See  must  remain  as  im- 
partial as  an  unbought  mascot  in  a  shop  win- 
dow. .  .  . 

The  next  column  of  Le  Journal  contained  an  ac- 
count of  the  Armenian  massacres ;  the  blood  of  the 
Armenian  cries  out  past  the  Holy  Father  to  heaven ; 
but  then  Armenians  are  after  all  heretics,  and  here 
again  the  principle  of  Audiatur  et  altera  pars 
comes  in.  Communications  are  not  open  with  the 
Turks.  Moreover,  Armenians,  like  Serbs,  are  worse 
than  infidels;  they  are  heretics.  Perhaps  God  is 
punishing  them.  .  .  . 

Audiatur  et  altera  pars,  and  the  Vatican  has  not 
forgotten  the  infidelity  and  disrespect  of  both 
France  and  Italy  in  the  past.  These  are  the  things, 
it  seems,  that  really  matter  to  the  Vatican.  Cardi- 
nal Gasparri's  portrait,  in  the  same  issue  of  Le 
Journal,  displays  a  countenance  of  serene  content- 
ment, a  sort  of  incarnate  "  Told-you-so." 

So  the  Vatican  lifts  its  pontifical  skirts  and 
shakes  the  dust  of  Western  Europe  off  its  feet. 

It  is  the  most  astounding  renunciation  in  his- 
tory. 

Indubitably  the  Christian  church  took  a  wide 
stride  from  the  kingship  of  God  when  it  placed  a 
golden  throne  for  the  unbaptised  Constantine  in  the 
midst  of  its  most  sacred  deliberations  at  Nicsea. 
But  it  seems  to  me  that  this  abandonment  of  moral 


210       ITALY,  FEANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

judgments  in  the  present  case  by  the  Holy  See  is  an 
almost  wider  step  from  the  church's  allegiance  to 
God.  ... 

§  3 

Thought  about  the  great  questions  of  life, 
thought  and  reasoned  direction,  this  is  what  the 
multitude  demands  mutely  and  weakly,  and  what 
the  organised  churches  are  failing  to  give.  They 
have  not  the  courage  of  their  creeds.  Either  their 
creeds  are  intellectual  flummery  or  they  are  the  so- 
lution to  the  riddles  with  which  the  world  is  strug- 
gling. But  the  churches  make  no  mention  of  their 
creeds.  They  chatter  about  sex  and  the  magic  effect 
of  church  attendance  and  simple  faith.  If  simple 
faith  is  enough,  the  churches  and  their  differences 
are  an  imposture.  Men  are  stirred  to  the  deepest 
questions  about  life  and  God,  and  the  Anglican 
church,  for  example,  obliges  —  as  I  have  described. 

It  is  necessary  to  struggle  against  the  unfavour- 
able impression  made  by  these  things.  They  must 
not  blind  us  to  the  deeper  movement  that  is  in  prog- 
ress in  a  quite  considerable  number  of  minds  in 
England  and  Prance  alike  towards  the  realisation 
of  the  kingdom  of  God. 

What  I  conceive  to  be  the  reality  of  the  religious 
revival  is  to  be  found  in  quarters  remote  from  the 
religious  professionals,     I^et  me  give  but  one  in- 


THE  RELIGIOUS  REVIVAL  211 

stance  of  several  that  occur  to  me.  I  met  soon 
after  my  return  from  France  a  man  who  has  stirred 
my  curiosity  for  years,  Mr.  David  Lubin,  the  prime 
mover  in  the  organisation  of  the  International  In- 
stitute of  Agriculture  in  Rome.  It  is  a  movement 
that  has  always  appealed  to  my  imagination.  The 
idea  is  to  establish  and  keep  up  to  date  a  record  of 
the  production  of  food  staples  in  the  world  with  a 
view  to  the  ultimate  world  control  of  food  supply 
and  distribution.  When  its  machinery  has  devel- 
oped sufficiently  it  will  of  course  be  possible  to  ex- 
tend its  activities  to  a  control  in  the  interests  of 
civilisation  of  many  other  staples  besides  foodstuffs. 
It  is  in  fact  the  suggestion  and  beginning  of  the 
economic  world  peace  and  the  economic  world 
state,  just  as  the  Hague  Tribunal  is  the  first  faint 
sketch  of  a  legal  world  state.  The  King  of  Italy 
has  met  Mr.  Lubin's  idea  with  open  hands.  ( It  was 
because  of  this  profoundly  interesting  experiment 
that  in  a  not  very  widely  known  book  of  mine.  The 
^Vorld  Set  Free  (May,  1914),  in  which  I  repre- 
sented a  world  state  as  arising  out  of  Armageddon, 
I  made  the  first  world  conference  meet  at  Brissago 
in  Italian  Switzerland  under  the  presidency  of  the 
King  of  Italy.)  So  that  when  I  found  I  could 
meet  Mr.  Lubin  I  did  so  very  gladly.  We  lunched 
together  in  a  pretty  little  room  high  over  Knights- 
bridge,  and  talked  through  an  afternoon. 


212       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

He  is  a  man  rather  after  the  type  of  Gladstone; 
he  could  be  made  to  look  like  Gladstone  in  a  cari- 
cature, and  he  has  that  compelling  quality  of  in- 
tense intellectual  excitement  which  was  one  of  the 
great  factors  in  the  personal  effectiveness  of  Glad- 
stone. He  is  a  Jew,  but  until  I  had  talked  to  him 
for  some  time  that  fact  did  not  occur  to  me.  He 
is  in  very  ill  health,  he  has  some  weakness  of  the 
heart  that  grips  and  holds  him  at  times  white  and 
silent. 

At  first  we  talked  of  his  Institute  and  its  work. 
Then  we  came  to  shipping  and  transport.  When- 
ever one  talks  now  of  human  affairs  one  comes  pres- 
ently to  shipping  and  transport  generally.  In 
Paris,  in  Italy,  when  I  returned  to  England,  every- 
where I  found  "  cost  of  carriage  "  was  being  dis- 
covered to  be  a  question  of  fundamental  impor- 
tance. Yet  transport,  railroads  and  shipping, 
these  vitally  important  services  in  the  world's  af- 
fairs, are  nearly  everywhere  in  private  hands  and 
run  for  profit.  In  the  case  of  shipping  they  are  run 
for  profit  on  such  antiquated  lines  that  freights 
vary  from  day  to  day  and  from  hour  to  hour.  It 
makes  the  business  of  food  supply  a  gamble.  And 
it  need  not  be  a  gamble. 

But  that  is  by  the  way  in  the  present  discussion. 
As  we  talked,  the  prospect  broadened  out  from  a 
prospect  of  the  growing  and  distribution  of  food  to 


THE  RELIGIOUS  REVIVAL  213 

a  general  view  of  the  world  becoming  one  economic 
community. 

I  talked  of  various  people  I  had  been  meeting  in 
the  previous  few  weeks.  "  So  many  of  us,"  I  said, 
"  seem  to  be  drifting  away  from  the  ideas  of  na- 
tionalism and  faction  and  policy,  towards  some- 
thing else  which  is  larger.  It  is  an  idea  of  a  right 
way  of  doing  things  for  human  purposes,  independ- 
ently of  these  limited  and  localised  references. 
Take  such  things  as  international  hygiene,  for  ex- 
ample, take  this  movement.  We  are  feeling  our 
way  towards  a  bigger  rule." 

"  The  rule  of  Righteousness,"  said  Mr.  Lubin. 

I  told  him  that  I  had  been  coming  more  and  more 
to  the  idea  —  not  as  a  sentimentality  or  a  metaphor, 
but  as  the  ruling  and  directing  idea,  the  structural 
idea,  of  all  one's  political  and  social  activities  —  of 
the  whole  world  as  one  state  and  community  and  of 
God  as  the  King  of  that  state. 

"  But  I  say  that,"  cried  Mr.  Lubin,  "  I  have  put 
my  name  to  that.     And  —  it  is  here!" 

He  struggled  up,  seized  an  Old  Testament  that 
lay  upon  a  side  table,  and  flung  it  upon  the  table. 
He  stood  over  it  and  rapped  its  cover.  "  It  is 
here"  he  said,  looking  more  like  Gladstone  than 
ever,  "  in  the  Prophets." 


214       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 


That  is  all  I  mean  to  tell  at  present  of  that  con- 
versation. 

We  talked  of  religion  for  two  hours.  Mr.  Lubin 
sees  things  in  terms  of  Israel  and  I  do  not.  For 
all  that  we  see  things  very  much  after  the  same 
fashion.  That  talk  was  only  one  of  a  number  of 
talks  about  religion  that  I  have  had  with  hard  and 
practical  men  who  want  to  get  the  world  straighter 
than  it  is,  and  who  perceive  that  they  must  have  a 
leadership  and  reference  outside  themselves.  That 
is  why  I  assert  so  confidently  that  there  is  a  real 
deep  religious  movement  afoot  in  the  world.  But 
not  one  of  those  conversations  could  have  gone  on, 
it  would  have  ceased  instantly,  if  any  one  bearing 
the  uniform  and  brand  of  any  organised  religious 
body,  any  clergyman,  priest,  mollah,  or  suchlike 
advocate  of  the  ten  thousand  patented  religions  in 
the  world,  had  come  in.  He  would  have  brought 
in  his  sectarian  spites,  his  propaganda  of  church- 
going,  his  persecution  of  the  heretic  and  the  illegiti- 
mate, his  ecclesiastical  politics,  his  taboos  and  his 
doctrinal  touchiness.  .  .  .  That  is  why,  though  I 
perceive  there  is  a  great  wave  of  religious  revival 
in  the  world  to-day,  I  doubt  whether  it  bodes  well 
for  the  professional  religious.  .  .  . 

The  other  day  I  was  talking  to  an  eminent  Angli- 


THE  RELIGIOUS  REVIVAL  215 

can  among  various  other  people,  and  some  one  with 
an  eye  to  him  propounded  this  remarkable  view. 

"  There  are  four  stages  between  belief  and  utter 
unbelief.  There  are  those  who  believe  in  God, 
those  who  doubt  him  like  Huxley  the  Agnostic,  those 
who  deny  him  like  the  Atheists  but  who  do  at  least 
keep  his  place  vacant,  and  lastly  those  who  have 
set  up  a  Church  in  his  place.  That  is  the  last  out- 
rage of  unbelief." 


IV 

THE  RIDDLE  OF  THE  BRITISH 

§  1 

All  the  French  people  I  met  in  France  seemed  to 
be  thinking  and  talking  about  the  English.  The 
English  bring  their  own  atmosphere  with  them ;  to 
begin  with  they  are  not  so  talkative,  and  I  did  not 
find  among  them  anything  like  the  same  vigour  of 
examination,  the  same  resolve  to  understand  the 
Anglo-French  reaction,  that  I  found  among  the 
French.  In  intellectual  processes  I  will  confess 
that  my  sympathies  are  undisguisedly  with  the 
French;  the  English  will  never  think  nor  talk 
clearly  until  they  get  clerical  "  Greek  "  and  sham 
"  humanities  "  out  of  their  public  schools  and  sin- 
cere study  and  genuine  humanities  in;  our  disin- 
genuous Anglican  compromise  is  like  a  cold  in  the 
English  head,  and  the  higher  education  in  Eng- 
land is  a  training  in  evasion.  This  is  an  always 
lamentable  state  of  affairs,  but  just  now  it  is  par- 
ticularly lamentable  because  quite  tremendous  op- 
portunities for  the  good  of  mankind  turn  on  the 
possibility  of  a  thorough  and  entirely  frank  mutual 

216 


THE  RIDDLE  OF  THE  BRITISH      217 

understanding  between  French,  Italians,  and  Eng- 
lish. For  years  there  has  been  a  considerable 
amount  of  systematic  study  in  France  of  English 
thought  and  English  developments.  Upon  almost 
any  question  of  current  English  opinion  and  upon 
most  current  English  social  questions,  the  best 
studies  are  in  French.  But  there  has  been  little  or 
no  reciprocal  activity.  The  English  in  France 
seem  to  confine  their  French  studies  to  La  Vie 
Parisienne.  It  is  what  they  have  been  led  to  expect 
of  French  literature. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  in  any  reasonable  mind 
that  this  war  is  binding  France  and  England  very 
closely  together.  They  dare  not  quarrel  for  the 
next  fifty  years.  They  are  bound  to  play  a  central 
part  in  the  World  League  for  the  Preservation  of 
Peace  that  must  follow  this  struggle.  There  is  no 
question  of  their  practical  union.  It  is  a  thing  that 
must  be.  But  it  is  remarkable  that  while  the 
French  mind  is  agog  to  apprehend  every  fact  and 
detail  it  can  about  the  British,  to  make  the  wisest 
and  fullest  use  of  our  binding  necessities,  that 
strange  English  "  incuria  " —  to  use  the  new  slang 
—  attains  to  its  most  monumental  in  this  matter. 

So  there  is  not  much  to  say  about  how  the  British 
think  about  the  French.  They  do  not  think.  They 
feel.  At  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  when  the  per- 
formance of  France  seemed  doubtful,  there  was  an 


218       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

enormous  feeling  for  France  in  Great  Britain;  it 
was  like  the  formless  feeling  one  has  for  a  brother. 
It  was  as  if  Britain  had  discovered  a  new  instinct. 
If  France  had  crumpled  up  like  paper,  the  English 
would  have  fought  on  passionately  to  restore  her. 
That  is  ancient  history  now.  Now  the  English 
still  feel  fraternal  and  fraternally  proud;  but  in  a 
mute  way  they  are  dazzled.  Since  the  German  at- 
tack on  Verdun  began,  the  French  have  achieved 
a  crescendo.  None  of  us  could  have  imagined  it. 
It  did  not  seem  possible  to  very  many  of  us  at  the 
end  of  1915  that  either  France  or  Germany  could 
hold  on  for  another  year.  There  was  much  secret 
anxiety  for  France.  It  has  given  place  now  to  un- 
stinted confidence  and  admiration.  In  their  aston- 
ishment the  British  are  apt  to  forget  the  impres- 
sive magnitude  of  their  own  effort,  the  millions  of 
soldiers,  the  innumerable  guns,  the  endless  torrent 
of  supplies  that  pour  into  France  to  avenge  the 
little  army  of  Mons.  It  seems  natural  to  us  that 
we  should  so  exert  ourselves  under  the  circum- 
stances. I  suppose  it  is  wonderful,  but,  as  a  sam- 
ple Englishman,  I  do  not  feel  that  it  is  at  all  won- 
derful. I  did  not  feel  it  wonderful  even  when  I 
saw  the  British  aeroplanes  lording  it  in  the  air  over 
Martinpuich,  and  not  a  German  to  be  seen.  Since 
Michael  would  have  it  so,  there,  at  last,  they  were. 
There  was  a  good  deal  of  doubt  in  France  about 


THE  RIDDLE  OF  THE  BRITISH      219 

the  vigour  of  the  British  effort,  until  the  Somme 
offensive.  All  that  had  been  dispelled  in  August 
when  I  reached  Paris.  There  was  not  the  shadow 
of  a  doubt  remaining  anywhere  of  the  power  and 
loyalty  of  the  British.  These  preliminary  assur- 
ances have  to  be  made,  because  it  is  in  the  nature  of 
the  French  mind  to  criticise,  and  it  must  not  be 
supposed  that  criticisms  of  detail  and  method  af- 
fect the  fraternity  and  complete  mutual  confidence 
which  is  the  stuff  of  the  Anglo-French  relationship. 


Now  first  the  French  have  been  enormously  as- 
tonished by  the  quality  of  the  ordinary  British  sol- 
diers in  our  new  armies.  One  Colonial  colonel  said 
something  almost  incredible  to  me  —  almost  incred- 
ible as  coming  from  a  Frenchman ;  it  was  a  matter 
too  solemn  for  any  compliments  or  polite  exagger- 
ations; he  said  in  tones  of  wonder  and  conviction, 
^'  They  are  as  good  as  ours"  It  was  his  acme  of  all 
possible  praise. 

That  means  any  sort  of  British  soldier.  Unless 
he  is  assisted  by  a  kilt  the  ordinary  Frenchman  is 
unable  to  distinguish  between  one  sort  of  British 
soldier  and  another.  He  cannot  tell  —  let  the 
ardent  nationalist  mark  the  fact !  —  a  Cockney  from 
an  Irishman  or  the  Cardiff  from  the  Essex  note. 


220       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

He  finds  them  all  extravagantly  and  unquenchably 
cheerful  and  with  a  generosity — "like  good  chil- 
dren." There  his  praise  is  a  little  tinged  by  doubt. 
The  British  are  reckless  —  recklessness  in  battle  a 
Frenchman  can  understand,  but  they  are  also  reck- 
less about  to-morrow's  bread  and  whether  the  tent 
is  safe  against  a  hurricane  in  the  night.  He  is 
struck  too  by  the  fact  that  they  are  much  more  vocal 
than  the  French  troops,  and  that  they  seem  to  have 
a  passion  for  bad  lugubrious  songs.  There  he 
smiles  and  shrugs  his  shoulders,  and  indeed  what 
else  can  any  of  us  do  in  the  presence  of  that  mys- 
tery? At  any  rate  the  legend  of  the  "  phlegmatic  " 
Englishman  has  been  scattered  to  the  four  winds 
of  heaven  by  the  guns  of  the  western  front.  The 
men  are  cool  in  action  it  is  true;  but  for  the  rest 
they  are,  by  the  French  standards,  quicksilver. 

But  I  will  not  exi)and  further  upon  the  general 
impression  made  by  the  English  in  France. 
Philippe  Millet's  En  Liaison  avec  les  Anglais  gives 
in  a  series  of  delightful  pictures  portraits  of  Brit- 
ish types  from  the  French  angle.  There  can  be  lit- 
tle doubt  that  the  British  quality,  genial,  naive, 
Ijlucky  and  generous,  has  won  for  itself  a  real  affec- 
tion in  France  wherever  it  has  had  a  chance  to  dis- 
play itself.  .  .  . 

But  when  it  comes  to  British  methods  then  the 
polite  Frenchman's  difficulties  begin.     Translating 


THE  RIDDLE  OF  THE  BRITISH      221 

hints  into  statements  and  guessing  at  reservations, 
I  would  say  that  the  French  fall  very  short  of  ad- 
miration of  the  way  in  which  our  higher  officers  set 
about  their  work,  they  are  disagreeably  impressed 
by  a  general  want  of  sedulousness  and  close  method 
in  our  leading.  They  think  we  economise  brains 
and  waste  blood.  They  are  shocked  at  the  way  in 
which  obviously  incompetent  or  inefficient  men  of 
the  old  army  class  are  retained  in  their  positions 
even  after  serious  failures,  and  they  were  pro- 
foundly moved  by  the  bad  staff  work  and  needlessly 
heavy  losses  of  our  opening  attacks  in  July.  They 
were  ready  to  condone  the  blunderings  and  floun- 
derings  of  the  1915  offensive  as  the  necessary  pen- 
alties of  an  "  amateur  "  army,  they  had  had  to  learn 
their  own  lesson  in  Champagne,  but  they  were  sur- 
prised to  find  how  much  the  British  had  still  to 
learn  in  July,  1916.  The  British  officers  excuse 
themselves  because,  they  plead,  they  are  still  ama- 
teurs. "  That  is  no  reason,"  says  the  Frenchman, 
"  why  they  should  be  amateurish." 

No  Frenchman  said  as  much  as  this  to  me,  but 
their  meaning  was  as  plain  as  dajdight.  I  tackled 
one  of  my  guides  in  this  matter ;  I  said  that  it  was 
the  plain  duty  of  the  French  military  people  to 
criticise  British  military  methods  sharply  if  they 
thought  they  were  wrong.  "  It  is  not  easy,"  he 
said.     "  Many  British  officers  do  not  think  they 


222       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

have  anything  to  learn.  And  English  people  do 
not  like  being  told  things.  What  could  we  do? 
We  could  hardly  send  a  French  oJBflcer  or  so  to  your 
headquarters  in  a  tutorial  capacity.  You  have  to 
do  things  in  your  own  way."  When  I  tried  to  draw 
General  Castelnau  into  this  dangerous  question  by 
suggesting  that  we  might  borrow  a  French  general 
or  so,  he  would  say  only,  "  There  is  only  one  way 
to  learn  war,  and  that  is  to  make  war."  When  it 
was  too  late,  in  the  lift,  I  thought  of  the  answer 
to  that.  There  is  only  one  way  to  make  war,  and 
that  is  by  the  sacrifice  of  incapables  and  the  rapid 
promotion  of  able  men.  If  old  and  tried  types  fail 
now,  new  types  must  be  sought.  But  to  do  that 
we  want  a  standard  of  efficiency.  We  want  a  con- 
ception of  intellectual  quality  in  performance  that 
is  still  lacking.  .  .  . 

M.  Joseph  Reinach,  in  whose  company  I  visited 
the  French  part  of  the  Somme  front,  was  full  of  a 
scheme,  which  he  has  since  published,  for  the  break- 
ing up  and  recomposition  of  the  French  and  British 
armies  into  a  series  of  composite  armies  which 
would  blend  the  magnificent  British  manhood  and 
material  with  French  science  and  military  experi- 
ence. He  pointed  out  the  endless  advantages  of 
such  an  arrangement;  the  stimulus  of  emulation, 
the  promotion  of  intimate  fraternal  feeling  between 
the  peoples  of  the  two  countries.     "  At  present," 


THE  RIDDLE  OF  THE  BRITISH      223 

he  said,  ••'  uo  Frenchman  ever  sees  an  Englishman 
except  at  Amiens  or  on  the  Somme.  Many  of  them 
still  have  no  idea  of  what  the  English  are  doing. . . ." 

"  Have  I  ever  told  you  the  story  of  compulsory 
Greek  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge? "  I  asked  ab- 
ruptly. 

"  What  has  that  to  do  with  it?  " 

"  Or  how  two  undistinguished  civil  service  com- 
missioners can  hold  up  the  scientific  education  of 
our  entire  administrative  class?  " 

M.  Reinach  protested  further. 

"  Because  you  are  proposing  to  loosen  the  grip  of 
a  certain  narrow  and  limited  class  upon  British  af- 
fairs, and  you  propose  it  as  though  it  were  a  job 
as  easy  as  rearranging  railway  fares  or  sending  a 
van  to  Calais.  That  is  the  problem  that  every 
decent  Englishman  is  trying  to  solve  to-day,  every 
man  of  that  Greater  Britain  which  has  supplied 
these  five  million  volunteers,  these  magnificent  tem- 
porary officers  and  all  this  wealth  of  munitions. 
And  the  oligarchy  is  so  invincibly  fortified!  Do 
you  think  it  will  let  in  Frenchmen  to  share  its  con- 
trols? It  will  not  even  let  in  Englishmen.  It 
holds  the  class  schools;  the  class  universities;  the 
examinations  for  our  public  services  are  its  class 
shibboleths;  it  is  the  church,  the  squirearchy,  the 
permanent  army  class,  permanent  ofiicialdom;  it 
makes  every  appointment,  it  is  the  fountain  of 


224       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

honour;  what  it  does  not  know  is  not  knowledge, 
what  it  cannot  do  must  not  be  done.  It  rules  India, 
ignorantly  and  obstructively;  it  will  wreck  the  em- 
pire rather  than  relinquish  its  ascendency  in  Ire- 
land. It  is  densely  self-satisfied  and  instinctively 
monopolistic.  It  is  on  our  backs,  and  with  it  on 
our  backs  we  common  English  must  bleed  and 
blunder  to  victory.  .  .  .  And  you  make  this  pro- 
posal ! " 

§  3 

The  antagonistic  relations  of  the  Anglican  oli- 
garchy with  the  greater  and  greater-spirited  Britain 
that  thrusts  behind  it  in  this  war  are  probably 
paralleled  very  closely  in  Germany,  probably  they 
are  exaggerated  in  Germany  with  a  bigger  military 
oligarchy  and  a  relatively  lesser  civil  body  at  its 
back.  This  antagonism  is  the  oddest  outcome  of 
the  tremendous  de-militarisation  of  war  that  has 
been  going  on.  In  France  it  is  probably  not  so 
marked  because  of  the  greater  flexibility  and 
adaptability  of  the  French  culture. 

All  military  people  —  people,  that  is,  profes- 
sionally and  primarily  military  —  are  inclined  to 
be  conservative.  For  thousands  of  years  the  mili- 
tary tradition  has  been  a  tradition  of  discipline. 
The  conception  of  the  common  soldier  has  been  a 
mechanically  obedient,  almost  de-humanised  man, 


THE  RIDDLE  OF  THE  BRITISH      225 

of  the  officer  a  highly  trained  autocrat.  In  two 
years  all  this  has  been  absolutely  reversed.  Indi- 
vidual quality,  inventive  organisation  and  indus- 
trialism will  win  this  war.  And  no  class  is  so  inno- 
cent of  these  things  as  the  military  caste.  Long 
accustomed  as  they  are  to  the  importance  of  moral 
effect  they  put  a  brave  face  uiion  the  business ;  they 
save  their  faces  astonishingly,  but  they  are  no 
longer  guiding  and  directing  this  war,  they  are 
being  pushed  from  behind  by  forces  they  never  fore- 
saw and  cannot  control.  The  aeroplanes  and  great 
guns  have  bolted  with  them,  the  tanks  begotten  of 
naval  and  civilian  wits,  shove  them  to  victory  in 
spite  of  themselves. 

Wherever  I  went  behind  the  British  lines  the 
officers  were  going  about  in  spurs.  These  spurs  got 
at  last  upon  my  nerves.  They  became  symbolical. 
They  became  as  grave  an  insult  to  the  tragedy  of 
the  war  as  if  they  were  false  noses.  The  British 
officers  go  for  long  automobile  rides  in  spurs. 
They  walk  about  the  trenches  in  spurs.  Occasion- 
ally I  would  see  a  horse ;  I  do  not  wish  to  be  unfair 
in  this  matter,  there  were  riding  horses  sometimes 
within  two  or  three  miles  of  the  ultimate  front,  but 
they  were  rarely  used. 

I  do  not  say  that  the  horse  is  entirely  obsolete  in 
this  war.  In  war  nothing  is  obsolete.  In  the 
trenches  men  fight  with  sticks.     In  the  Pasubio 


226       ITALY,  FEANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

battle  the  other  day  one  of  the  Alpini  silenced  a 
machine  gun  by  throwing  stones.  In  the  West  Afri- 
can campaign  we  have  employed  troops  armed  with 
bows  and  arrows,  and  they  have  done  very  valuable 
work.  But  these  are  exceptional  cases.  The  mili- 
tary use  of  the  horse  henceforth  will  be  such  an 
exceptional  case.  It  is  ridiculous  for  these  spurs 
still  to  clink  about  the  modern  battlefield.  What 
the  gross  cost  of  the  spurs  and  horses  and  trappings 
of  the  British  army  amount  to,  and  how  many  men 
are  grooming  and  tending  horses  who  might  just 
as  well  be  ploughing  and  milking  at  home  I  cannot 
guess ;  it  must  be  a  total  so  enormous  as  seriously  to 
affect  the  balance  of  the  war. 

And  these  spurs  and  their  retention  are  only  the 
outward  and  visible  symbol  of  the  obstinate  re- 
sistance of  the  Anglican  intelligence  to  the  clear 
logic  of  the  present  situation.  It  is  not  only  the 
external  equipment  of  our  leaders  that  falls  behind 
the  times ;  our  political  and  administrative  services 
are  in  the  hands  of  the  same  desolatingly  inadapt- 
able  class.  The  British  are  still  wearing  spurs  in 
Ireland;  they  are  wearing  them  in  India;  and  the 
age  of  the  spur  has  passed.  At  the  outset  of  this 
war  there  was  an  absolute  cessation  of  criticism 
of  the  military  and  administrative  castes;  it  is  be- 
coming a  question  whether  we  may  not  pay  too 
heavily  in  blundering  and  waste,  in  military  and 


THE  RIDDLE  OF  THE  BRITISH      227 

economic  lassitude,  in  international  irritation  and 
the  accumulation  of  future  dangers  in  Ireland, 
Egypt,  India,  and  elsewhere,  for  an  apparent  ab- 
sence of  internal  friction.  These  people  have  no 
gratitude  for  tacit  help,  no  spirit  of  intelligent 
service,  and  no  sense  of  fair  play  to  the  outsider. 
The  latter  deficiency  indeed  they  call  esprit  de  corps 
and  prize  it  as  if  it  were  a  noble  quality. 

It  becomes  more  and  more  imperative  that  the 
foreign  observer  should  distinguish  between  this 
narrower,  older  official  Britain  and  the  greater 
newer  Britain  that  struggles  to  free  itself  from  the 
entanglement  of  a  system  outgrown.  There  are 
many  Englishmen  who  would  like  to  say  to  the 
French  and  the  Irish  and  the  Italians  and  India, 
who  indeed  feel  every  week  now  a  more  urgent  need 
of  saying,  "  Have  patience  with  us."  The  Riddle 
of  the  British  is  very  largely  solved  if  you  will 
think  of  a  great  naodern  liberal  nation  seeking  to 
slough  an  exceedingly  tough  and  tight  skin.  .  .  . 

Nothing  is  more  illuminating  and  self-educa- 
tional than  to  explain  one's  home  politics  to  an  in- 
telligent foreigner  enquirer;  it  strips  off  all  the 
secondary  considerations,  the  allusiveness,  the 
merely  tactical  considerations.  One  sees  the  forest 
not  as  a  confusion  of  trees  but  as  something  with  a 
definite  shape  and  place.  I  was  asked  in  Italy  and 
in  France,  "  Where  does  TiOrd  Northcliffe  come  into 


228       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

the  British  system  —  or  Lloyd  George?  Who  is 
Mr.  Redmond?  Why  is  Lloyd  George  a  Minister, 
and  why  does  not  Mr.  Redmond  take  office?  Isn't 
there  something  called  an  ordnance  department, 
and  why  is  there  a  separate  ministry  of  munitions? 
Can  Mr.  Lloyd  George  remove  an  incapable  gen- 
eral? .  .  ." 

I  found  M.  Joseph  Reinach  particularly  pene- 
trating and  persistent.  It  is  an  amusing  but  rather 
difficult  exercise  to  recall  what  I  tried  to  convey 
to  him  by  way  of  a  theory  of  Britain.  He  is  by  no 
means  an  uncritical  listener.  I  explained  that 
there  is  an  "  inner  Britain,"  official  Britain,  which 
is  Anglican  or  official  Presbyterian,  which  at  the 
outside  in  the  w^hole  world  cannot  claim  to  speak 
for  twenty  million  Anglican  and  Presbyterian  com- 
municants, which  monopolises  official  positions,  ad- 
ministration and  honours  in  the  entire  British  em- 
pire, dominates  the  court,  and,  typically,  is  spurred 
and  red-tabbed.  (It  was  just  at  this  time  that  the 
spurs  were  most  on  my  nerves.) 

This  inner  Britain,  I  went  on  to  explain,  holds 
tenaciously  to  its  positions  of  advantage,  from 
which  it  is  difficult  to  dislodge  it  without  upsetting 
the  whole  empire,  and  it  insists  upon  treating  the 
rest  of  the  four  hundred  millions  who  constitute 
that  empire  as  outsiders,  foreigners,  subject  races 
and  suspected  persons. 


THE  RIDDLE  OF  THE  BRITISH      229 

"  To  yon,"  I  said,  "  it  bears  itself  with  an  appear- 
ance of  faintly  hostile,  faintly  contemptuous  apa- 
thy. It  is  still  so  entirely  insular  that  it  shudders 
at  the  thought  of  the  Channel  Tunnel.  This  is  the 
Britain  which  irritates  and  puzzles  you  so  intensely 
—  that  you  are  quite  unable  to  conceal  these  feel- 
ings from  me.  Unhappily  it  is  the  Britain  you  see 
most  of.  Well,  outside  this  oflftcial  Britain  is 
^  Greater  Britain  ' —  the  real  Britain  with  which 
you  have  to  reckon  in  future."  (From  this  point 
a  faint  flavour  of  mysticism  crept  into  my  disserta- 
tion. I  found  myself  talking  with  something  in  my 
voice  curiously  reminiscent  of  those  liberal  Rus- 
sians who  set  themselves  to  explain  the  contrasts 
and  contradictions  of  "  official  "  Russia  and  "  true  " 
Russia. )  "  This  Greater  Britain,"  I  asserted,  "  is 
in  a  perpetual  conflict  with  official  Britain,  strug- 
gling to  keep  it  up  to  its  work,  shoving  it  towards 
its  ends,  endeavouring  in  spite  of  the  tenacious  mis- 
chievousness  of  the  privileged,  to  keep  the  peace 
and  a  common  aim  with  the  French  and  Irish  and 
Italians  and  Russians  and  Indians.  It  is  to  that 
outer  Britain  that  those  Englishmen  you  found  so 
interesting  and  sympathetic,  Lloyd  George  and 
Lord  Northcliffe,  for  example,  belong.  It  is  the 
Britain  of  the  great  effort,  the  Britain  of  the  smok- 
ing factories  and  the  torrent  of  munitions,  the  Brit- 
ain of  the  men  and  subalterns  of  the  new  armies. 


230       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

the  Britain  which  invents  and  thinks  and  achieves 
and  stands  now  between  German  imperialism  and 
the  empire  of  the  world,  I  do  not  want  to  exag- 
gerate the  quality  of  greater  Britain,  If  the  inner 
set  are  narrowly  educated,  the  outer  set  is  often 
crudely  educated.  If  the  inner  set  is  so  close  knit 
as  to  seem  like  a  conspiracy,  the  outer  set  is  so 
loosely  knit  as  to  seem  like  a  noisy  confusion. 
Greater  Britain  is  only  beginning  to  realise  itself 
and  find  itself.  For  all  its  crudity  there  is  a  giant 
spirit  in  it  feeling  its  way  towards  the  light.  It 
has  quite  other  ambitions  for  the  ending  of  the  war 
than  some  haggled  treaty  of  alliance  with  France 
and  Italy;  some  advantage  that  will  invalidate 
German  competition ;  it  begins  to  realise  newer  and 
wider  sympathies,  possibilities  of  an  amalgamation 
of  interests  and  a  communitv  of  aim  that  it  is  ut- 
terly  beyond  the  habits  of  the  old  oligarchy  to  con- 
ceive, beyond  the  scope  of  that  tawdry  word  '  Em- 
pire '  to  express.  .  .  ." 

I  descended  from  my  rhetoric  to  find  M,  Reinach 
asking  how  and  when  this  greater  Britain  was 
likely  to  become  politically  effective. 


THE  SOCIAL  CHANGES  IN  PROGRESS 


"  Nothing  will  be  the  same  after  the  war."  This 
is  one  of  the  consoling  platitudes  with  which  people 
cover  over  voids  of  thought.  They  utter  it  with  an 
air  of  round-eyed  profundity.  But  to  ask  in  reply, 
"Then  how  will  things  be  different?"  is  in  many 
cases  to  rouse  great  resentment.  It  is  almost  as 
rude  as  saying,  "  Was  that  thought  of  yours  really 
a  thought? " 

Let  us  in  this  chapter  confine  ourselves  to  the 
social-economic  processes  that  are  going  on.  So  far 
as  I  am  able  to  distinguish  among  the  things  that 
are  being  said  in  these  matters,  they  may  be  classi- 
fied out  into  groups  that  centre  upon  several  typi- 
cal questions.  There  is  the  question  of  "  How  to 
pay  for  the  war?  "  There  is  the  question  of  the  be- 
haviour of  labour  after  the  war.  "Will  there  be 
a  Labour  Truce  or  a  violent  labour  struggle? " 
There  is  the  question  of  the  reconstruction  of  Euro- 
pean industry  after  the  war  in  the  face  of  an  Amer- 
ica in  a  state  of  monetary  and  economic  repletion 

231 


232       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

throngh  non-intervention.  My  present  purpose  in 
this  chapter  is  a  critical  one ;  it  is  not  to  solve  prob- 
lems but  to  set  out  various  currents  of  thought  that 
are  flowing  through  the  general  mind.  Which  cur- 
rent is  likely  to  seize  upon  and  carry  human  affairs 
with  it,  is  not  for  our  present  speculation. 

There  seem  to  be  two  distinct  ways  of  answering 
the  first  of  the  questions  I  have  noted.  They  do  not 
necessarily  contradict  each  other.  Of  course  the 
war  is  being  largely  paid  for  immediately  out  of 
the  accumulated  private  wealth  of  the  past.  We 
are  buying  off  the  "  hold-up  "  of  the  private  owner 
upon  the  material  and  resources  we  need,  and  pay- 
ing in  paper  money  and  war  loans.  This  is  not  in 
itself  an  impoverishment  of  the  community.  The 
wealth  of  individuals  is  not  the  wealth  of  nations ; 
the  two  things  may  easily  be  contradictory  when 
the  rich  man's  wealth  consists  of  land  or  natural 
resources  or  franchises  or  privileges,  the  use  of 
which  he  reluctantly  yields  for  high  prices.  The 
conversion  of  held-up  land  and  material  into  work- 
able and  actively  used  material  in  exchange  for 
national  debt  may  be  indeed  a  positive  increase  in 
the  wealth  of  the  community.  And  what  is  hap- 
pening in  all  the  belligerent  countries  is  the  taking 
over  of  more  and  more  of  the  realities  of  wealth 
from  private  hands  and,  in  exchange,  the  contract- 
ing of  great  masses  of  debt  to  [jrivate  people.     The 


SOCIAL  CHANGES  IN  PROGEESS     233 

net  tendency  is  towards  the  disappearance  of  a 
reality  holding  class  and  the  destruction  of  realities 
in  warfare,  and  the  appearance  of  a  vast  rentier 
class  in  its  place.  At  the  end  of  the  war  much  ma- 
terial will  be  destroyed  for  evermore,  transit,  food 
production  and  industry  will  be  everywhere  enor- 
mously socialised,  and  the  country  will  be  liable  to 
pay  every  year  in  interest,  a  sum  of  money  exceed- 
ing the  entire  national  expenditure  before  the  war. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  the  state,  and  disregard- 
ing material  and  moral  damages,  that  annual  inter- 
est is  the  annual  instalment  of  the  price  to  be  paid 
for  the  war. 

Now  the  interesting  question  arises  whether  these 
great  belligerent  states  may  go  bankrupt,  and  if  so 
to  what  extent.  States  may  go  bankrupt  to  the 
private  creditor  without  repudiating  their  debts  or 
seeming  to  pay  less  to  him.  They  can  go  bankrupt 
either  by  a  depreciation  of  their  currency  or  — 
without  touching  the  gold  standard  —  through  a 
rise  in  prices.  In  the  end  both  these  things  work 
out  to  the  same  end;  the  creditor  gets  so  many 
loaves  or  pairs  of  boots  or  workman's  hours  of 
labour  for  his  pound  less  than  he  would  have  got 
under  the  previous  conditions.  One  may  imagine 
this  process  of  price  (and  of  course  wages)  increase 
going  on  to  a  limitless  extent.  Many  people  are 
inclined  to  look  to  such  an  increase  in  prices  as  a 


234       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

certain  outcome  of  the  war,  and  just  so  far  as  it 
goes,  just  so  far  Avill  the  burthen  of  the  rentier  class, 
their  call  that  is  for  goods  and  services,  be  light- 
ened. This  expectation  is  very  generally  enter- 
tained, and  I  can  see  little  reason  against  it.  The 
intensely  stupid  or  dishonest  "  labour  "  press,  how- 
ever, which  in  the  interests  of  the  common  enemy 
misrepresents  socialism  and  seeks  to  misguide  la- 
bour in  Great  Britain,  ignores  these  considerations, 
and  positively  holds  out  this  prospect  of  rising 
prices  as  an  alarming  one  to  the  more  credulous  and 
ignorant  of  its  readers. 

But  now  comes  the  second  way  of  meeting  the 
after-the-war  obligations.  This  second  way  is  by 
increasing  the  wealth  of  the  state  and  by  increas- 
ing the  national  production  to  such  an  extent  that 
the  payment  of  the  rentier  class  will  not  be  an  over- 
whelming burthen.  Rising  prices  bilk  the  creditor. 
Increased  production  will  check  the  rise  in  prices 
and  get  him  a  real  payment.  The  outlook  for  the 
national  creditor  seems  to  be  that  he  will  be  partly 
bilked  and  partly  paid;  how  far  he  will  be  bilked 
and  how  far  paid  depends  almost  entirely  upon  this 
possible  increase  in  production ;  and  there  is  conse- 
quently a  very  keen  and  quite  unprecedented  desire 
very  widely  diffused  among  intelligent  and  active 
people,  holding  War  Loan  scrip  and  the  like,  in  all 
the  belligerent  countries,  to  see  bold  and  hopeful 


SOCIAL  CHANGES  IN  PROGRESS     235 

schemes  for  state  enrichment  pushed  forward.  The 
movement  towards  socialism  is  receiving  an  impulse 
from  a  new  and  unexpected  quarter,  there  is  now  a 
rentier  socialism,  and  it  is  interesting  to  note  that 
while  the  London  Times  is  full  of  schemes  of  great 
state  enteri^rises,  for  the  exploitation  of  Colonial 
state  lands,  for  the  state  purchase  and  wholesaling 
of  food  and  many  natural  products,  and  for  the 
syndication  of  shipping  and  the  great  staple  indus- 
tries into  vast  trusts  into  which  not  only  the  British 
but  the  French  and  Italian  governments  may  enter 
as  partners,  the  so-called  socialist  press  of  Great 
Britain  is  chiefly  busy  about  the  draughts  in  the 
cell  of  Mr.  Fenner  Brockway  and  the  refusal  of 
Private  Scott  Duckers  to  put  on  his  khaki  trousers. 
The  New  Statesman  and  the  Fabian  Society,  how- 
ever, display  a  wider  intelligence. 

There  is  a  great  variety  of  suggestions  for  this 
increase  of  public  wealth  and  production.  Many 
of  them  have  an  extreme  reasonableness.  The  ex- 
tent to  which  they  will  be  adopted  depends,  no 
doubt,  very  largely  upon  the  politician  and  perma- 
nent oflftcial,  and  both  those  classes  are  prone  to 
panic  in  the  presence  of  reality.  In  spite  of  its 
own  interest  in  restraining  a  rise  in  prices,  the  old 
official  "  salariat  "  is  likely  to  be  obstructive  to  any 
such  innovations.  It  is  the  resistance  of  spurs  and 
red  tabs  to  military  innovations  over  again.     This 


236       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

is  the  resistance  of  quills  and  red  tape.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  organisation  of  Britain  for  war  has 
"  officialised  "  a  number  of  industrial  leaders,  and 
created  a  large  body  of  temporary  and  adventurous 
officials.  They  may  want  to  carry  on  into  peace 
production  the  great  new  factories  the  war  has  cre- 
ated. At  the  end  of  the  war,  for  example,  every 
belligerent  country  will  be  in  urgent  need  of  cheap 
automobiles  for  farmers,  tradesmen,  and  industrial 
purposes  generally.  America  is  now  producing 
such  automobiles  at  a  price  of  eighty  pounds.  But 
Europe  will  be  heavily  in  debt  to  America,  her  in- 
dustries will  be  disorganised,  and  there  will  there- 
fore be  no  sort  of  return  payment  possible  for  these 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  automobiles.  A  country 
that  is  neither  creditor  nor  producer  cannot  be  an 
importer.  Consequently  though  those  cheap  tin 
cars  may  be  stacked  as  high  as  the  Washington 
Monument  in  America,  they  will  never  come  to 
Europe.  On  the  other  hand,  the  great  shell  fac- 
tories of  Europe  will  be  standing  idle  and  ready, 
their  staffs  disciplined  and  available,  for  conver- 
sion to  the  new  task.  The  imperative  common- 
sense  of  the  position  seems  to  be  that  the  European 
governments  should  set  themselves  straight  away  to 
out-Ford  Ford,  and  provide  their  own  people  with 
cheap  road  transport. 

But  here  comes  in  the  question  whether  this  com- 


SOCIAL  CHANGES  IN  PROGRESS     237 

monsense  course  is  inevitable.  Suppose  the  men- 
tal energy  left  in  Europe  after  the  war  is  insufficient 
for  such  a  constructive  feat  as  this.  There  will 
certainly  be  the  obstruction  of  official  pedantry,  the 
hold-up  of  this  vested  interest  and  that,  the  greedy 
desire  of  "  private  enterprise  "  to  exploit  the  occa- 
sion upon  rather  more  costly  and  less  productive 
lines,  the  general  distrust  felt  by  ignorant  and  un- 
imaginative people  of  a  new  way  of  doing  things. 
The  process  after  all  may  not  get  done  in  the  ob- 
viously wise  wa}^  This  will  not  mean  that  Europe 
will  buy  American  cars.  It  will  be  quite  unable  to 
buy  American  cars.  It  will  be  unable  to  make  any- 
thing that  America  will  not  be  able  to  make  more 
cheaply  for  itself.  But  it  will  mean  that  Europe 
will  go  on  without  cheap  cars,  that  is  to  say  it  will 
go  on  more  sluggishly  and  clumsily  and  wastefully 
at  a  lower  economic  level.  Hampered  transport 
means  hampered  production  of  other  things,  and 
an  increasing  inability  to  buy  abroad.  And  so  we 
go  down  and  down. 

It  does  not  follow  that  because  a  course  is  the 
manifestly  right  and  advantageous  course  for  the 
community  that  it  will  be  taken.  I  am  reminded 
of  this  by  a  special  basket  in  my  study  here,  into 
which  I  pitch  letters,  circulars,  pamphlets  and  so 
forth  as  they  come  to  hand  from  a  gentleman  named 
Gatti,  and  his  friends  Mr.  Adrian  Ross,  Mr.  Roy 


238       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

Horniman,  Mr.  Henry  Murray,  and  others.  His 
particular  project  is  the  construction  of  a  Railway 
Clearing  House  for  London.  It  is  an  absolutely 
admirable  scheme.  It  would  cut  down  the  heavy 
traffic  in  the  streets  of  London  to  about  one-third ; 
it  would  enable  us  to  run  the  goods  traffic  of  Eng- 
land with  less  than  half  the  number  of  railway 
trucks  we  now  employ ;  it  would  turn  over  enormous 
areas  of  valuable  land  from  their  present  use  as  rail- 
ways goods  yards  and  sidings;  it  would  save  time 
in  the  transit  of  goods  and  labour  in  their  handling. 
It  is  a  quite  beautifully  worked  out  scheme.  For 
the  last  eight  or  ten  years  this  group  of  devoted 
fanatics  has  been  pressing  this  undertaking  upon 
an  indifferent  country  wdth  increasing  vehemence 
and  astonishment  at  that  indifference.  The  point 
is  that  its  adoption,  though  it  would  be  of  enor- 
mous general  benefit,  would  be  of  no  particular 
benefit  to  any  leading  man  or  highly  placed  official. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  would  upset  all  sorts  of  indi- 
viduals who  are  in  a  position  to  obstruct  it  quietly 
—  and  they  do  so.  Meaning  no  evil.  I  dip  my 
hand  in  the  accumulation  and  extract  a  leaflet  by 
the  all  too  zealous  Mr.  Murray.  In  it  he  denounces 
various  public  officials  by  name  as  cheats  and 
scoundrels,  and  invites  a  prosecution  for  libel. 

In    that   fashion    nothing   will    ever   get    done. 
There  is  no  prosecution,  but  for  all  that  I  do  not 


SOCIAL  CHANGES  IN  PROGRESS      231) 

agree  with  Mr.  Murray  about  the  men  he  names. 
These  gentlemen  are  just  comfortable  gentlemen, 
own  brothers  to  these  old  generals  of  ours  who  will 
not  take  off  their  spurs.  They  are  probably  quite 
charming  people  except  that  they  know  nothing  of 
that  Fear  of  God  which  searches  the  heart.  Why 
should  they  bother? 

So  many  of  these  after-the-war  i)roblems  bring 
one  back  to  the  question  how  far  the  war  has  put 
the  Fear  of  God  into  the  hearts  of  responsible  men. 
There  is  really  no  other  reason  in  existence  that  I 
can  imagine  why  they  should  ask  themselves  the 
question,  "  Have  I  done  my  best?  "  and  that  still 
more  important  question,  "  Am  I  doing  my  best 
now?  "  And  so  while  I  hear  plenty  of  talk  about 
the  great  reorganisations  that  are  to  come  after 
the  war,  while  there  is  the  stir  of  doubt  among  the 
rentiers  whether,  after  all,  they  will  get  paid,  while 
the  unavoidable  stresses  and  sacrifices  of  the  war 
are  making  many  people  question  the  rightfulness 
of  much  that  they  did  as  a  matter  of  course,  and 
of  much  that  they  took  for  granted,  I  perceive  there 
is  also  something  dull  and  not  very  articulate  in 
this  European  world,  something  resistant  and  inert, 
that  is  like  the  obstinate  rolling  over  of  a  heavy 
sleeper  after  he  has  been  called  upon  to  get  up. 
"  Just  a  little  longer.  .  .  .  Just  for  my  time." 

One  thought  alone  seems  to  make  these  more  in- 


/ 

240       ITALY,  FKANCE  AND  BRITxilN      ' 

tractable  i3eople  anxious.  I  thrust  it  in  as  my  last 
stimulant  when  everything  else  has  failed.  "  There 
will  be  frightful  trouble  with  labour  after  the  war," 
I  say. 

They  try  to  persuade  themselves  that  military 
discipline  is  breaking  in  labour.  .  .  . 


What  does  British  labour  think  of  the  outlook 
after  the  war? 

As  a  distinctive  thing  British  labour  does  not 
think.  "  Class-conscious  labour,"  as  the  Marxists 
put  it,  scarcely  exists  in  Britain.  The  only  con- 
vincing case  I  ever  met  was  a  bath-chairman  of 
literary  habits  at  Eastbourne.  The  only  people 
who  are,  as  a  class,  class-conscious  in  the  British 
community  are  the  Anglican  gentry  and  their  fringe 
of  the  genteel.  Everybody  else  is  "  respectable." 
The  mass  of  British  workers  find  their  thinking  in 
the  ordinary  halfpenny  papers  or  in  John  Bull. 
The  so-called  labour  papers  are  perhaps  less  repre- 
sentative of  British  labour  than  any  other  section 
of  the  press;  the  Labour  Leader^  for  example,  is 
the  organ  of  such  people  as  Bertrand  Russell,  Ver- 
non Lee,  Morel,  academic  rentiers  who  know  about 
as  much  of  the  labour  side  of  industrialism  as  they 
do  of  cock-fighting.     All  the  British  peoples  are 


SOCIAL  CHANGES  IN  PKOGRESS     211 

racially  willing  and  good-tempered  people,  quite 
ready  to  be  led  by  those  they  imagine  to  be  abler 
than  themselves.  They  make  the  most  cheerful  and 
generous  soldiers  in  the  whole  world,  without  in- 
sisting upon  that  democratic  respect  which  the 
Frenchman  exacts.  They  do  not  criticise  and  they 
do  not  trouble  themselves  much  about  the  general 
plan  of  operations,  so  long  as  they  have  confidence 
in  the  quality  and  good-will  of  their  leading.  But 
British  soldiers  will  hiss  a  general  when  they  think 
he  is  selfish,  unfeeling,  or  a  muff.  And  the  social- 
ist propaganda  has  imported  ideas  of  public  service 
into  private  employment.  Labour  in  Britain  has 
been  growing  increasingly  impatient  of  bad  or  self- 
ish industrial  leadership.  Labour  trouble  in  Great 
Britain  turns  wholly  upon  the  idea  crystallised  in 
the  one  word  "  profiteer."  Legislation  and  regu- 
lation of  hours  of  labour,  high  wages,  nothing  will 
keep  labour  quiet  in  Great  Britain  if  labour  thinks 
it  is  being  exploited  for  jirivate  gain. 

Labour  feels  very  suspicious  of  private  gain. 
For  that  suspicion  a  certain  rather  common  type 
of  employer  is  mainly  to  blame.  Labour  believes 
that  employers  as  a  class  cheat  workmen  as  a  class, 
plan  to  cheat  them,  of  their  full  share  in  the  com- 
mon output,  and  drive  hard  bargains.  It  believes 
that  private  employers  are  equally  ready  to  sacri- 
fice the  welfare  of  the  nation  and  the  welfare  of  the 


242       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

workers  for  mere  personal  advantage.  It  has  a 
traditional  experience  to  support  these  suspicions. 

In  no  department  of  morals  have  ideas  changed 
so  completely  during  the  last  eighty  years  as  in 
relation  to  "  profits."  Eighty  years  ago  every  one 
believed  in  the  divine  right  of  property  to  do  what 
it  pleased  with  its  advantages,  a  doctrine  more  dis- 
astrous socially  than  the  divine  right  of  kings. 
There  was  no  such  sense  of  the  immorality  of  "  hold- 
ing up  "  as  pervades  the  public  conscience  to-day. 
The  worker  was  expected  not  only  to  work,  but  to 
be  grateful  for  employment.  The  property  owner 
held  his  property  and  handed  it  out  for  use  and 
development  or  not,  just  as  he  thought  fit.  These 
ideas  are  not  altogether  extinct  to-day.  Only  a  few 
days  ago  I  met  a  magnificent  old  lady  of  seventy- 
nine  or  eighty,  who  discoursed  upon  the  wicked- 
ness of  her  gardener  in  demanding  another  shilling 
a  week  because  of  war  prices. 

She  was  a  valiant  and  handsome  personage.  A 
face  that  had  still  a  healthy  natural  pinkness  looked 
out  from  under  blond  curls,  and  an  elegant  and 
carefully  tended  hand  tossed  back  some  fine  old 
lace  to  gesticulate  more  freely.  She  had  previously 
charmed  her  hearers  by  sweeping  aside  certain  in- 
vasion rumours  that  were  drifting  about. 

"Germans  invade  Z7s.^"  she  cried.  "Who'd  let 
'em,  I'd  like  to  know?    Who'd  let  'em?" 


SOCIAL  CHANGES  IN  PROGRESS     243 

And  then  she  reverted  to  her  grievance  about  the 
gardener. 

"  I  tokl  him  that  after  the  war  he'd  be  glad 
enough  to  get  anything.  Grateful !  They'll  all  be 
coming  back  after  the  war  —  all  of  'em,  glad  enough 
to  get  anything.  Asking  for  another  shilling  in- 
deed I" 

Every  one  who  heard  her  looked  shocked.  But 
that  was  the  tone  of  every  one  of  importance  in  the 
dark  years  that  followed  the  Napoleonic  wars. 
That  is  just  one  survivor  of  the  old  tradition.  An- 
other is  Blight  the  solicitor,  who  goes  about  bewail- 
ing the  fact  that  we  writers  are  "  holding  out  false 
hopes  of  higher  agricultural  wages  after  the  war." 
But  these  are  both  exceptions.  They  are  held  to 
be  remarkable  people  even  by  their  own  class.  The 
mass  of  property  owners  and  influential  people  in 
Europe  to-day  no  more  believe  in  the  sacred  right 
of  property  to  hold  up  development  and  dictate 
terms  than  do  the  more  intelligent  workers.  The 
ideas  of  collective  ends  and  of  the  fiduciary  nature 
of  property  had  been  soaking  through  the  Euro- 
pean community  for  years  before  the  war.  The 
necessity  for  sudden  and  even  violent  co-operations 
and  submersions  of  individuality  in  a  common  pur- 
pose, which  this  war  has  produced,  is  rapidly 
crystallising  out  these  ideas  into  clear  proposals. 

War  is  an  evil  thing,  but  people  who  will  not 


244       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

learn  from  reason  must  have  an  ugly  teacher.  This 
war  has  brought  home  to  every  one  the  supremacy 
of  the  public  need  over  every  sort  of  individual 
claim. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  things  in  the  British 
war  press  is  the  amount  of  space  given  to  the  dis- 
cussion of  labour  developments  after  the  war. 
This  is  in  its  completeness  peculiar  to  the  British 
situation.  Nothing  on  the  same  scale  is  percepti- 
ble in  the  press  of  the  Latin  allies.  A  great  move- 
ment on  the  part  of  capitalists  and  business  organ- 
isers is  manifest  to  assure  the  worker  of  a  change 
of  heart  and  a  will  to  change  method.  Labour  is 
suspicious,  not  foolishly  but  wisely  suspicious. 
But  Labour  is  considering  it. 

"  National  industrial  syndication,"  say  the  busi- 
ness organisers. 

"  Guild  socialism,"  say  the  workers. 

There  is  also  a  considerable  amount  of  talking 
and  writing  about  "  profit-sharing  "  and  about  giv- 
ing the  workers  a  share  in  the  business  direction. 
Neither  of  these  ideas  appeals  to  the  shrewder  heads 
among  the  workers.  So  far  as  direction  goes  their 
disposition  is  to  ask  the  captain  to  command  the 
ship.  So  far  as  profits  go,  they  think  the  captain 
has  no  more  right  than  the  cabin  boy  to  specula- 
tive gains;  he  should  do  his  work   for  his  pay 


SOCIAL  CHANGES  IN  PEOGRESS     245 

whether  it  is  profitable  or  unprofitable  work. 
There  is  little  balm  for  labour  discontent  in  these 
schemes  for  making  the  worker  also  an  infinitesimal 
profiteer. 

During  my  journey  in  Italy  and  France  I  met 
several  men  who  were  keenly  interested  in  business 
organisation.  Just  before  I  started  my  friend  N., 
who  has  been  the  chief  partner  in  the  building  up 
of  a  very  big  and  very  extensively  advertised  Ameri- 
can business,  came  to  see  me  on  his  way  back  to 
America.  He  is  as  interested  in  his  work  as  a 
scientific  specialist,  and  as  ready  to  talk  about  it 
to  any  intelligent  and  interested  hearer.  He  was 
particularly  keen  upon  the  question  of  continuity 
in  the  business,  when  it  behoves  the  older  genera- 
tion to  let  in  the  younger  to  responsible  manage- 
ment and  to  efface  themselves.  He  was  a  man  of 
five-and  forty.  Incidentally  he  mentioned  that  he 
had  never  taken  anything  for  his  private  life  out 
of  the  great  business  he  had  built  up  but  a  salary, 
"a  good  salary,"  and  that  now  he  was  going  to 
grant  himself  a  pension.  "  I  shan't  interfere  any 
more.  I  shall  come  right  away  and  live  in  Europe 
for  a  year  so  as  not  to  be  tempted  to  interfere.  The 
boys  have  got  to  run  it  some  day,  and  they  had 
better  get  their  experience  while  they're  young  and 
capable  of  learning  it.     I  did." 


246       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

I  like  N.'s  ideas.  "  Practically,"  I  said,  "  you've 
been  a  public  official.  You've  treated  your  business 
like  a  public  service." 

That  was  his  idea. 

"  Would  you  mind  if  it  was  a  public  service?  " 

He  reflected,  and  some  disagreeable  memory 
darkened  his  face.  "  Under  the  politicians?  "  he 
said. 

I  took  the  train  of  thought  N.  had  set  going 
abroad  with  me  next  day.  I  had  the  good  luck 
to  meet  men  who  were  interesting  industrially. 
Captain  Pirelli,  my  guide  in  Italy,  has  a  name 
familiar  to  every  motorist;  his  name  goes  wher- 
ever cars  go,  spelt  with  a  big  long  capital  P.  Lieu- 
tenant de  Tessin's  name  will  recall  one  of  the  most 
interesting  experiments  in  profit-sharing  to  the 
student  of  social  science.  I  tried  over  N.'s  problem 
on  both  of  them.  I  found  in  both  their  minds  just 
the  same  attitude  as  he  takes  up  towards  his  busi- 
ness. They  think  any  businesses  that  are  worthy 
of  respect,  the  sorts  of  businesses  that  interest  them, 
are  public  functions.  Money-lenders  and  specu- 
lators, merchants  and  gambling  gentlefolk  may 
think  in  terms  of  profit ;  capable  business  directors 
certainly  do  nothing  of  the  sort. 

I  met  a  British  officer  in  France  who  is  also  a 
landowner.  I  got  him  to  talk  about  his  adminis- 
trative work  upon  his  property.     He  was  very  keen 


SOCIAL  CHANGES  IN  PROGRESS     247 

upon  new  methods.  He  said  he  tried  to  do  his 
duty  by  his  land. 

"  How  much  land?  "  I  asked. 

"  Just  over  nine  thousand  acres,"  he  said. 

"  But  you  could  manage  forty  or  fifty  thousand 
with  little  more  trouble." 

"  If  I  had  it.     In  some  ways  it  would  be  easier." 

"  What  a  waste !  "  I  said.  ''  Of  course  you  ought 
not  to  own  these  acres;  what  you  ought  to  be  is 
the  agricultural  controller  of  just  as  big  an  estate 
of  the  public  lands  as  you  could  manage  —  with  a 
suitable  salary." 

He  reflected  upon  that  idea.  He  said  he  did 
not  get  much  of  a  salary  out  of  his  land  as  it  was, 
and  made  a  regrettable  allusion  to  Mr.  Lloyd 
George.  "  When  a  man  tries  to  do  his  duty  by 
the  land,"  he  said.  .  .  . 

But  here  running  through  the  thoughts  of  the 
Englishman  and  the  Italian  and  the  Frenchman 
and  the  American  alike  one  finds  just  the  same 
idea  of  a  kind  of  officialism  in  ownership.  It  is 
an  idea  that  pervades  our  thought  and  public  dis- 
cussion to-day  everywhere,  and  it  is  an  idea  that 
is  scarcely  traceable  at  all  in  the  thought  of  the 
early  half  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  idea  of 
service  and  responsibility  in  property  has  increased 
and  is  increasing,  the  conception  of  "  hold-up,"  the 
usurer's  conception  of  his  right  to  be  bought  out 


248       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

of  the  way,  fades.  And  the  process  has  been  enor- 
mously enhanced  by  the  various  big-scale  experi- 
ments in  temporary  socialism  that  have  been  forced 
upon  the  belligerent  powers.  Men  of  the  most  in- 
dividualistic quality  are  being  educated  up  to  the 
possibilities  of  concerted  collective  action.  My 
friend  and  fellow-student  Y.,  inventor  and  business 
organiser,  who  used  to  make  the  best  steam  omni- 
buses in  the  world,  and  who  is  now  making  all 
sorts  of  things  for  the  army,  would  go  pink  with 
suspicious  anger  at  the  mere  words  "inspector" 
or  "  socialism  "  three  or  four  years  ago.  He  does 
not  do  so  now. 

A  great  proportion  of  this  sort  of  man,  this  en- 
ergetic directive  sort  of  man  in  England,  is  think- 
ing socialism  to-day.  They  may  not  be  saying 
socialism,  but  they  are  thinking  it.  When  labour 
begins  to  realise  what  is  adrift  it  will  be  divided 
between  two  things :  between  appreciative  co-opera- 
tion, for  which  guild  socialism  in  particular  has 
prepared  its  mind,  and  traditional  suspicion.  I 
will  not  offer  to  guess  here  which  will  prevail. 


§  3 

The  impression  I  have  of  the  present  mental 
process  in  the  European  communities  is  that  while 
the  official  class  and  the  rentier  class  is  thinking 


N 


SOCIAL  CHANGES  IN  PROGEESS     249 

very  poorly  and  inadequately  and  with  a  merely 
obstructive  disposition;  while  the  churches  are 
merely  wasting  their  energies  in  futile  self-adver- 
tisement; while  the  labour  mass  is  suspicious  and 
disposed  to  make  terms  for  itself  rather  than  come 
into  any  large  schemes  of  reconstruction  that  will 
abolish  profit  as  a  primary  aim  in  economic  life, 
there  is  still  a  very  considerable  movement  towards 
such  a  reconstruction.  Nothing  is  so  misleading 
as  a  careless  analogy.  In  the  dead  years  that  fol- 
lowed the  Napoleonic  wars,  which  are  often  quoted 
as  a  precedent  for  expectation  now,  the  spirit  of 
collective  service  was  near  its  minimum;  it  was 
never  so  strong  and  never  so  manifestly  spreading 
and  increasing  as  it  is  to-day. 

But  service  to  what? 

I  have  my  own  very  strong  preconceptions  here, 
and  since  my  temperament  is  sanguine  they  neces- 
sarily colour  my  view.  I  believe  that  this  impulse 
to  collective  service  can  satisfy  itself  only  under 
the  formula  that  mankind  is  one  state  of  which 
God  is  the  undying  king,  and  that  the  service  of 
men's  collective  needs  is  the  true  worship  of  God. 
But  eagerly  as  I  would  grasp  at  any  evidence  that 
this  idea  is  being  developed  and  taken  up  by  the 
general  consciousness,  I  am  quite  unable  to  per- 
suade myself  that  anything  of  the  sort  is  going  on. 
I  do  perceive  a  search  for  large  forms  into  which 


250       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

the  prevalent  impulse  to  devotion  can  be  thrown. 
But  the  organised  religious  bodies,  with  their  creeds 
and  badges  and  their  instinct  for  self-preservation 
at  any  cost,  stand  between  men  and  their  spiritual 
growth  in  just  the  same  way  the  forestallers  stand 
between  men  and  food.  Their  activities  at  present 
are  an  almost  intolerable  nuisance.  One  cannot 
say  "  God  "  but  some  tout  is  instantly  seeking  to 
pluck  one  into  his  particular  cave  of  flummery  and 
orthodoxy.  What  a  rational  man  means  by  God  is 
just  God.  The  more  you  define  and  argue  about 
God  the  more  he  remains  the  same  simple  thing. 
Judaism,  Christianity,  Islam,  modern  Hindu  relig- 
ious thought,  all  agree  in  declaring  that  there  is  one 
God,  master  and  leader  of  all  mankind,  in  unending 
conflict  with  cruelty,  disorder,  folly  and  waste.  To 
my  mind,  it  follows  immediately  that  there  can  be 
no  king,  no  government  of  any  sort,  which  is  not 
either  a  subordinate  or  a  rebel  government,  a  local 
usurpation,  in  the  kingdom  of  God.  But  no  or- 
ganised religious  body  has  ever  had  the  courage 
and  honesty  to  insist  upon  this.  They  all  pander 
to  nationalism  and  to  powers  and  princes.  They 
exist  so  to  pander.  Every  organised  religion  in 
the  i'orld  exists  only  to  exploit  and  divert  and 
was  (    file  religious  impulse  in  man. 

'.^iiu6  conviction  that  the  world  kingdom  of  God 
T-p  i-he  only  true  method  of  human  service,  is  so 


# 


SOCIAL  CHANGES  IN  PROGRESS     251 

clear  and  final  in  my  own  mind,  it  seems  so  inevi- 
tably the  conviction  to  which  all  right-thinking  men 
must  ultimately  come,  that  I  feel  almost  like  a 
looker-on  at  a  game  of  blindman's  buff  as  I  watch 
the  discussion  of  synthetic  political  ideas.  The 
blind  man  thrusts  his  seeking  hands  into  the  oddest 
corners,  he  clutches  at  chairs  and  curtains,  but  at 
last  he  must  surelv  find  and  hold  and  feel  over 
and  guess  the  name  of  the  plainly  visible  quarry. 
Some  of  the  French  and  Italian  people  I  talked 
to  said  they  were  fighting  for  "  Civilisation."  That 
is  one  name  for  the  kingdom  of  God,  and  I  have 
heard  English  people  use  it  too.  But  much  of  the 
contemporary  thought  of  England  still  wanders 
with  its  back  to  the  light.  Most  of  it  is  pawing 
over  jerry-built,  secondary  things.  I  have  before 
me  a  little  book,  the  joint  work  of  Dr.  Grey  and 
Mr.  Turner,  of  an  ex-public  schoolmaster  and  a 
manufacturer,  called  Eclipse  or  Empire?  (The 
title  World  Might  or  Downfall?  had  already  been 
secured  in  another  quarter. )  It  is  a  book  that  has 
been  enormously  advertised ;  it  has  been  almost  im- 
possible to  escape  its  column-long  advertisements; 
it  is  billed  upon  the  hoardings,  and  it  is  on  the 
whole  a  very  able  and  right-spirited  book.  It  calls 
for  more  and  better  education,  for  more  scientific 
methods,  for  less  class  suspicion  and  more  social 
explicitness  and  understanding,  for  a  franker  and 


252       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

fairer  treatment  of  labour.  But  why  does  it  call 
for  these  things?  Does  it  call  for  them  because 
they  are  right?  Because  in  accomplishing  them 
one  serves  God? 

Not  at  all.  But  because  otherwise  this  strange 
sprawling  empire  of  ours  will  drop  back  into  a 
secondary  place  in  the  world.  These  two  writers 
really  seem  to  think  that  the  slack  workman,  the 
slacker  wealthy  man,  the  negligent  official,  the  con- 
servative schoolmaster,  the  greedy  usurer,  the  com- 
fortable obstructive,  confronted  with  this  alterna- 
tive, terrified  at  this  idea  of  something  or  other 
called  the  Empire  being  "eclipsed,"  eager  for  the 
continuance  of  this  undefined  glory  over  their  fel- 
low-creatures called  "  Empire,"  will  perceive  the 
error  of  their  ways  and  become  energetic,  devoted, 
capable.  They  think  an  ideal  of  that  sort  is  going 
to  change  the  daily  lives  of  men.  ...  I  sympathise 
with  their  purpose,  and  I  deplore  their  conception 
of  motives.  If  men  will  not  give  themselves  for 
righteousness,  they  will  not  give  themselves  for  a 
geographical  score.  If  they  will  not  work  well  for 
the  hatred  of  bad  work,  they  will  not  work  well  for 
the  hatred  of  Germans.  This  "  Empire  "  idea  has 
been  cadging  about  the  British  empire,  trying  to 
collect  enthusiasm  and  devotion,  since  the  days  of 
Disraeli.  It  is,  I  submit,  too  big  for  the  mean- 
spirited,  and  too  tawdry  and  limited  for  the  fine 


SOCIAL  CHANGES  IN  PKOGRESS     253 

and  generous.  It  leaves  out  tlie  Frencli  and  the 
Italians  and  the  Belgians  and  all  our  blood  brother- 
hood of  allies.  It  has  no  compelling  force  in  it. 
We  British  are  not  naturally  Iihperialist ;  we  are 
something  greater  —  or  something  less.  For  two 
years  and  a  half  now  we  have  been  fighting  against 
Imperialism  in  its  most  extravagant  form.  It  is 
a  poor  incentive  to  right  living  to  propose  to  par- 
ody the  devil  we  fight  against. 

The  blind  man  must  lunge  again. 

For  when  the  right  answer  is  seized  it  answers 
not  only  the  question  why  men  should  work  for 
their  fellow-men  but  also  why  nation  should  cease 
to  arm  and  plan  and  contrive  against  nation.  The 
social  problem  is  only  the  international  problem 
in  retail,  the  international  problem  is  only  the 
social  one  in  gross. 

My  bias  rules  me  altogether  here.  I  see  men  in 
social,  in  economic  and  in  international  affairs, 
alike  eager  to  put  an  end  to  conflict,  inexpressibly 
weary  of  conflict  and  the  waste  and  pain  and  death 
it  involves.  But  to  end  conflict  one  must  abandon 
aggressive  or  uncordial  pretensions.  Labour  is 
sick  at  the  idea  of  more  strikes  and  struggles  after 
the  war,  industrialism  is  sick  of  competition  and 
anxious  for  service,  everybody  is  sick  of  war.  But 
how  can  they  end  any  of  these  clashes  except  by 
the  definition  and  recognition  of  a  common  end 


254       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

which  will  establish  a  standard  for  the  trial  of 
every  conceivable  issue,  to  which,  that  is,  every 
other  issue  can  be  subordinated ;  and  what  common 
end  can  there  be  in  all  the  world  except  this  idea 
of  the  world  kingdom  of  God?  What  is  the  good 
of  orienting  one's  devotion  to  a  firm,  or  to  class 
solidarity,  or  La  Repiihlique  Frangaise,  or  Poland, 
or  Albania,  or  such  love  and  loyalty  as  people  pro- 
fess for  King  George  or  King  Albert  or  the  Due 
d'Orleans  —  it  puzzles  me  why  —  or  any  such  in- 
termediate object  of  self-abandonment?  We  need 
a  standard  so  universal  that  the  platelayer  may  say 
to  the  barrister  or  the  duchess,  or  the  Red  Indian 
to  the  Limehouse  sailor,  or  the  Anzac  soldier  to  the 
Sinn  Feiner  or  the  Chinaman,  "  What  are  we  two 
doing  for  it?  "  And  to  fill  the  place  of  that  "it," 
no  other  idea  is  great  enough  or  commanding 
enough,  but  only  the  world  kingdom  of  God. 

However  long  he  may  have  to  hunt,  the  blind 
man  who  is  seeking  service  and  an  end  to  bicker- 
ings will  come  to  that  at  last,  because  of  all  the 
thousand  other  things  he  may  clutch  at,  nothing 
else  can  satisfy  his  manifest  need. 


THE  ENDING  OF  THE  WAR 


About  the  end  of  the  war  there  are  two  chief  ways 
of  thinking :  there  is  a  simpler  sort  of  mind  which 
desires  merely  a  date,  and  a  more  complex  kind 
which  wants  particulars.  To  the  former  class  be- 
long the  most  of  the  men  out  at  the  front.  They 
are  so  bored  by  this  war  that  they  would  welcome 
any  peace  that  did  not  definitely  admit  defeat  — 
and  examine  the  particulars  later.  The  "  tone  "  of 
the  German  army,  to  judge  by  its  captured  letters, 
is  even  lower.  It  would  welcome  peace  in  any 
form.  Never  in  the  whole  history  of  the  world  has 
a  war  been  so  universally  unpopular  as  this  war. 

The  mind  of  the  soldier  is  obsessed  by  a  vision  of 
home-coming  for  good,  so  vivid  and  alluring  that 
it  blots  out  nearly  every  other  consideration.  The 
visions  of  people  at  home  are  of  plenty  instead  of 
privation,  lights  up,  and  the  cessation  of  a  hundred 
tiresome  restrictions.  And  it  is  natural  therefore 
that  a  writer  rather  given  to  guesses  and  forecasts 

265 


256       ITALY,  FEANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

should  be  asked  very  frequently  to  guess  how  long 
the  war  has  still  to  run. 

All  such  forecasting  is  the  very  wildest  of  shoot- 
ing. There  are  the  chances  of  war  to  put  one  out, 
and  of  a  war  that  changes  far  faster  than  the  mili- 
tary intelligence.  I  have  made  various  forecasts. 
At  the  outset  I  thought  that  military  Germany 
would  fight  at  about  the  1899  level,  would  be  lavish 
with  cavalry  and  great  attacks,  that  it  would  be  re- 
luctant to  entrench,  and  that  the  French  and  Brit- 
ish had  learnt  the  lesson  of  the  Boer  War  better 
than  the  Germans.  I  trusted  to  the  melodramatic 
instinct  of  the  Kaiser.  I  trusted  to  the  quickened 
intelligence  of  the  British  military  caste.  The  first 
rush  seemed  to  bear  me  out,  and  I  opened  my  paper 
day  by  day  expecting  to  read  of  the  British  and 
French  entrenched  and  the  Germans  beating  them- 
selves to  death  against  wire  and  trenches.  In  those 
days  I  wrote  of  the  French  being  over  the  Rhine 
before  1915.  But  it  was  the  Germans  who  en- 
trenched first. 

Since  then  I  have  made  some  other  attempts.  I 
did  not  prophesy  at  all  in  1915,  so  far  as  I  can  re- 
member. If  I  had  I  should  certainly  have  backed 
the  Gallipoli  attempt  to  win.  It  was  the  right  thing 
to  do,  and  it  was  done  abominably.  It  should  have 
given  us  Constantinople  and  brought  Bulgaria  to 
our  side ;  it  gave  us  a  tragic  history  of  administra- 


THE  ENDING  OF  THE  WAR  257 

tive  indolence  and  negligence,  and  wasted  braveiy 
and  devotion.  I  was  very  hopeful  of  the  western 
offensive  in  1915 ;  and  in  1916  I  counted  still  on  our 
continuing  push.  I  believe  we  were  very  near 
something  like  decision  this  last  September,  but 
some  archaic  dream  of  doing  it  with  cavalry  dashed 
these  hopes.  The  "  Tanks  "  arrived  too  late  to  do 
their  proper  work,  and  their  method  of  use  is  being 
worked  out  very  slowly.  ...  I  still  believe  in  the 
western  push,  if  only  we  push  it  for  all  we  are 
worth.  If  only  we  push  it  with  our  brains,  with 
our  available  and  still  unorganised  brains;  if  only 
we  realise  that  the  art  of  modern  war  is  to  invent 
and  invent  and  invent.  Hitherto  I  have  always 
hoped  and  looked  for  decision,  a  complete  victory 
that  would  enable  the  Allies  to  dictate  peace.  But 
such  an  expectation  is  largely  conditioned  by  these 
delicate  questions  of  adaptability  that  my  tour  of 
the  front  has  made  very  urgent  in  my  mind.  A 
spiteful  German  American  writer  has  said  that 
the  British  would  rather  kill  twenty  thousand  of 
their  men  than  break  one  general.  Even  a  gain  of 
truth  in  such  a  remark  is  a  very  valid  reason  for 
lengthening  one's  estimate  of  the  duration  of  the 
war. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Western  allies 
are  playing  a  winning  game  upon  the  western  front, 
and  that  this  is  the  front  of  decision  now.     It  is  not 


258       ITALY,  FEANCE  AND  BKITAIN 

in  doubt  that  they  are  beating  the  Germans  and 
shoving  them  back.  The  uncertain  factor  is  the 
rate  at  which  they  are  shoving  them  back.  If  they 
can  presently  get  to  so  rapid  an  advance  as  to 
bring  the  average  rate  since  July  1st  up  to  two  or 
three  miles  a  day,  then  we  shall  still  see  the  Allies 
dictating  tenns.  But  if  the  shove  drags  on  at  its 
present  pace  of  less  than  a  mile  and  four  thousand 
prisoners  a  week  over  the  limited  Somme  front  only, 
if  nothing  is  attempted  elsewhere  to  increase  the 
area  of  pressure,*  then  the  intolerable  stress  and 
boredom  of  the  war  will  bring  about  a  peace  long 
before  the  Germans  are  decisively  crushed.  But 
the  war,  universally  detested,  may  go  on  into  1918 
or  1919.  Food  riots,  famine,  and  general  disorgan- 
isation will  come  before  1920,  if  it  does.  The  Al- 
lies have  a  winning  game  before  them,  but  they 
seem  unable  to  discover  and  promote  the  military 
genius  needed  to  harvest  an  unquestionable  victory. 
In  the  long  run  this  may  not  be  an  unmixed  evil. 
Victory,  complete  and  dramatic,  may  be  bought  too 
dearly.  We  need  not  triumphs  out  of  this  war  but 
the  peace  of  the  world. 

This  war  is  altogether  unlike  any  previous  war, 
and  its  ending,  like  its  development,  will  follow 
a  course  of  its  own.     For  a  time  people's  minds 

*  This  was  written  originally  before  the  French  offensive  at 
Verdun. 


THE  ENDING  OF  THE  WAR  259 

ran  into  the  old  grooves,  the  Germans  were  going 
nach  Paris  and  nach  London;  Lord  Curzon  filled 
our  minds  with  a  pleasant  image  of  the  Bombay 
Lancers  riding  down  Vnter  den  Linden.  But  the 
Versailles  precedent  of  a  council  of  victors  dictat- 
ing terms  to  the  vanquished  is  not  now  so  evidently 
in  men's  minds.  The  utmost  the  Allies  talk  upon 
now  is  to  say,  "  We  must  end  the  war  on  German 
soil."  The  Germans  talk  frankly  of  "  holding  out." 
I  have  guessed  that  the  western  offensive  will  be 
chiefly  on  German  soil  by  next  June;  it  is  a  mere 
guess,  and  I  admit  it  is  quite  conceivable  that  the 
"  push  "  may  still  be  grinding  out  its  daily  tale  of 
wounded  and  prisoners  in  1918  far  from  that  goal. 

None  of  the  combatants  expected  such  a  war  as 
this,  and  the  consequences  is  that  the  world  at 
large  has  no  idea  how  to  get  out  of  it.  The  war 
may  stay  with  us  like  a  schoolboy  caller,  because 
it  does  not  know  how  to  go.  The  Italians  said  as 
much  to  me.  "  Suppose  we  get  to  Innsbruck  and 
Labich  and  Trieste,"  they  said,  "  it  isn't  an  end ! " 
Lord  Northcliffe,  I  am  told,  came  away  from  Italy 
with  the  conviction  that  the  war  would  last  six 
years. 

There  is  the  clearest  evidence  that  nearly  every 
one  is  anxious  to  get  out  of  the  war  now.  Nobody 
at  all,  except  perhaps  a  few  people  who  may  be 
called  to  account  and  a  handful  of  greedy  profit- 


260       ITALY,  FEANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

seekers,  wants  to  keep  it  going.  Quietly  perhaps 
and  unobtrusively,  every  one  I  know  is  now  trying 
to  find  the  way  out  of  the  war,  and  I  am  convinced 
that  the  same  is  the  case  in  Germany.  That  is 
what  makes  the  Peace-at-any-price  campaign  so  ex- 
asperating. It  is  like  being  chased  by  clamorous 
geese  across  a  common  in  the  direction  in  which  you 
want  to  go.  But  how  are  we  to  get  out  —  with 
any  credit  —  in  such  a  way  as  to  prevent  a  subse- 
quent collapse  into  another  war  as  frightful? 

At  present  three  programmes  are  before  the  world 
of  the  way  in  which  the  war  can  be  ended.  The 
first  of  these  assumes  a  complete  predominance  of 
our  Allies.  It  has  been  stated  in  general  terms 
by  Mr.  Asquith.  Evacuation,  reparation,  due  pun- 
ishment of  those  responsible  for  the  war,  and 
guarantees  that  nothing  of  the  sort  shall  happen 
again.  There  is  as  yet  no  mention  of  the  nature  of 
these  guarantees.  Just  exactly  what  is  to  happen 
to  Poland,  Austria,  and  the  Turkish  Empire  does 
not  appear  in  this  prospectus.  The  German  Chan- 
cellor is  equally  elusive.  The  Kaiser  has  stampeded 
the  peace-at-any-price  people  of  Great  Britain  by 
solemnly  proclaiming  that  Germany  wants  peace. 
We  knew  that.  But  w^hat  sort  of  peace?  It  would 
seem  that  we  are  promised  vaguely  evacuation  and 
reparation  on  the  western  frontier,  and  in  addition 
there  are  to  be  guarantees  —  but  it  is  quite  evident 


THE  ENDING  OF  THE  WAR  261 

they  are  altogether  different  guarantees  from  Mr. 
Asquith's  —  that  nothing  of  the  sort  is  ever  to 
happen  again.  The  programme  of  the  British  and 
their  Allies  seems  to  contemplate  something  like  a 
forcible  disarmament  of  Germany;  the  programme 
of  Germany  hints  at  least  at  a  disarmament  and 
military  occupation  of  Belgium,  the  desertion  of 
Serbia  and  Russia,  and  the  surrender  to  Germany 
of  every  facility  for  a  later  and  more  successful 
German  offensive  in  the  west.  But  it  is  clear  that 
on  these  terms  as  stated  the  war  must  go  on  to  the 
definite  defeat  of  one  side  or  the  other  or  a  Eu- 
ropean chaos.  They  are  irreconcilable  sets  of 
terms. 

Yet  it  is  hard  to  say  how  they  can  be  modified 
on  either  side,  if  the  war  is  to  be  decided  only  be- 
tween the  belligerents  and  by  standards  of  national 
interest  only,  without  reference  to  any  other  con- 
siderations. Our  Allies  would  be  insane  to  leave 
the  Hohenzollern  at  the  end  of  the  war  with  a  knife 
in  his  hand,  after  the  display  he  has  made  of  his 
quality.  To  surrender  his  knife  means  for  the 
Hohenzollern  the  abandonment  of  his  dreams,  the 
repudiation  of  the  entire  education  and  training 
of  Germany  for  half  a  century.  When  we  realise 
the  fatality  of  this  antagonism,  we  realise  how  it  is 
that,  in  this  present  anticipation  of  hell,  the  weary, 
wasted  and  tormented  nations  must  still  sustain 


262       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 


their  monstrous  dreary  struggle.  And  that  is  why 
this  thought  that  possibly  there  may  be  a  side  way 
out,  a  sort  of  turning  over  of  the  present  endlessly 
hopeless  game  into  a  new  and  different  and  man- 
ageable game  through  the  introduction  of  some  ex- 
ternal factor,  creeps  and  spreads  as  I  find  it  creep- 
ing and  spreading. 

That  is  what  the  finer  intelligences  of  America 
are  beginning  to  realise,  and  why  men  in  Europe 
continually  turn  their  eyes  to  America,  with  a  sur- 
mise, with  a  doubt. 

A  point  of  departure  for  very  much  thinking  in 
this  matter  is  the  recent  conversation  of  speeches 
between  President  Wilson  and  Viscount  Grey.  All 
Europe  w^as  impressed  by  the  truth  and  by  Presi- 
dent Wilson's  recognition  of  the  truth  that  from 
any  other  great  war  after  this,  America  will  be  un- 
able to  abstain.  Can  America  come  into  this  dis- 
pute at  the  end  to  insist  upon  something  better  than 
a  new  diplomatic  patchwork,  and  so  obviate  the 
later  completer  Armageddon?  Is  there,  above  the 
claims  and  passions  of  Germany,  France,  Britain, 
and  the  rest  of  them,  a  conceivable  right  thing  to 
do  for  all  mankind?  That  it  might  also  be  in  the 
interest  of  America  to  support?  Is  there  a  Third 
Party  solution,  so  to  spealv,  which  may  possibly  be 
the  way  out  from  this  war? 


THE  ENDING  OF  THE  WAK  263 

§  2 

Let  me  sketch  out  here  what  I  conceive  to  be  the 
essentials  of  a  world  settlement.  Some  of  the 
items  are  the  mere  commonplaces  of  every  one  who 
discusses  this  question ;  some  are  less  frequently  in- 
sisted upon.  I  have  been  joining  up  one  thing  to 
another,  suggestions  I  have  heard  from  this  man 
and  that,  and  I  believe  that  it  is  really  possible  to 
state  a  solution  that  will  be  acceptable  to  the  bulk 
of  reasonable  men  all  about  the  world.  Directly 
we  put  the  panic-massacres  of  Dinant  and  Louvain, 
the  crime  of  the  Lusitania  and  so  on  into  the  cate- 
gory of  symptoms  rather  than  essentials,  outrages 
that  call  for  special  punishments  and  reparations, 
but  that  do  not  enter  further  into  the  ultimate 
settlement,  we  can  begin  to  conceive  a  possible 
world  treaty.  Let  me  state  the  broad  outlines  of 
this  pacification.  The  outlines  depend  one  upon 
the  other;  each  is  a  condition  of  the  other.  It  is 
upon  these  lines  that  the  thoughtful  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  merely  combative  people,  seem 
to  be  drifting  everywhere. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  agreed  that  there  would 
have  to  be  an  identical  treaty  between  all  the 
great  powers  of  the  world  binding  them  to  cer- 
tain things.     It  would  have  to  provide: 

That  the  few  great  industrial  states  capable  of 


264       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

producing  modern  war  equipment  should  take  over 
and  control  completely  the  manufacture  of  all 
munitions  of  war  in  the  world.  And  that  they 
should  absolutely  close  the  supply  of  such  ma- 
terial to  all  the  other  states  in  the  world.  This  is 
a  far  easier  task  than  many  people  suppose.  War 
has  now  been  so  developed  on  its  mechanical  side 
that  the  question  of  its  continuance  or  abolition 
rests  now  entirely  upon  four  or  five  great  powers. 

Next  comes  the  League  of  Peace  idea ;  that  there 
should  be  an  International  Tribunal  for  the  dis- 
cussion and  settlement  of  international  disputes. 
That  the  dominating  powers  should  maintain  land 
and  sea  forces  only  up  to  a  limit  agreed  upon  and 
for  internal  police  use  only  or  for  the  purpose  of 
enforcing  the  decisions  of  the  Tribunal.  That  they 
should  all  be  bound  to  attack  and  suppress  any 
power  amongst  them  which  increases  its  war  equip- 
ment beyond  its  defined  limits. 

That  much  has  already  been  broached  in  several 
quarters.  But  so  far  is  not  enough.  It  ignores 
the  chief  processes  of  that  economic  war  that  aids 
and  abets  and  is  inseparably  a  part  of  modern  in- 
ternational conflicts.  If  we  are  to  go  as  far  as  we 
have  already  stated  in  the  matter  of  international 
controls,  then  we  must  go  further  and  provide  that 
the  International  Tribunal  should  have  power  to 
consider  and  set  aside  all  tariffs  and  localised  privi- 


THE  ENDING  OF  THE  WAR  265 

leges  that  seem  grossly  unfair  or  seriously  irritat- 
ing between  the  various  states  of  the  world.  It 
should  have  power  to  pass  or  revise  all  new  tariff, 
quarantine,  alien  exclusion,  or  the  like  legisla- 
tion affecting  international  relations.  Moreover, 
it  should  take  over  and  extend  the  work  of  the  In- 
ternational Bureau  of  Agriculture  at  Rome  with  a 
view  to  the  control  of  all  staple  products.  It  should 
administer  the  sea  law  of  the  world,  and  control 
and  standardise  freights  in  the  common  interests 
of  mankind.  Without  these  provisions  it  would  be 
merely  preventing  the  use  of  certain  weapons;  it 
would  be  doing  nothing  to  prevent  countries  stran- 
gling or  suffocating  each  other  by  commercial  war- 
fare.    It  would  not  abolish  war. 

Now  upon  this  issue  people  do  not  seem  to  me 
to  be  yet  thinking  very  clearly.  It  is  the  exception 
to  find  any  one  among  the  peace  talkers  who  really 
grasps  how  inseparably  the  necessity  for  free  ac- 
cess for  every  one  to  natural  products,  to  coal  and 
tropical  products  e.g.,  free  shipping  at  non-dis- 
criminating tariffs,  and  the  recognition  by  a  Tri- 
bunal of  the  principle  of  common  welfare  in  trade 
matters,  is  bound  up  with  the  ideal  of  a  permanent 
world  peace.  But  any  peace  that  does  not  provide 
for  these  things  will  be  merely  the  laying  down  of 
the  sword  in  order  to  take  up  the  cudgel.  And  a 
"  peace "  that  did  not  rehabilitate  industrial  Bel- 


266       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

gium,  Poland,  and  the  north  of  France,  would  call 
imperatively  for  the  imposition  upon  the  Allies  of  a 
system  of  tariffs  in  the  interests  of  these  countries, 
and  for  a  bitter  economic  "  war  after  the  war " 
against  Germany.  That  restoration  is  of  course  an 
implicit  condition  to  any  attempt  to  set  up  an  eco- 
nomic peace  in  the  world. 

These  things  being  arranged  for  the  future,  it 
would  be  further  necessary  to  set  up  an  interna- 
tional boundary  commission,  subject  to  certain  de- 
fining conditions  agreed  upon  by  the  belligerents, 
to  redraw  the  map  of  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa. 
This  war  does  afford  an  occasion  such  as  the  world 
may  never  have  again  of  tracing  out  the  "  natural 
map"  of  mankind,  the  map  that  will  secure  the 
maximum  of  homogeneity  and  the  minimum  of 
racial  and  economic  freedom.  All  idealistic  people 
hope  for  a  restored  Poland.  But  it  is  a  childish 
thing  to  dream  of  a  contented  Poland  with  Posen 
still  under  the  Prussian  heel,  with  Cracow  cut  off 
and  without  a  Baltic  port.  These  claims  of  Poland 
to  completeness  have  a  higher  sanction  than  the 
mere  give  and  take  of  belligerents  in  congress. 

Moreover  this  International  Tribunal,  if  it  was 
indeed  to  prevent  war,  would  need  also  to  have 
power  to  intervene  in  the  affairs  of  any  country  or 
region  in  a  state  of  open  and  manifest  disorder,  for 
the  protection  of  foreign  travellers  and  of  persons 


THE  ENDING  OF  THE  WAR  267 

and  interests  localised  in  that  country  but  foreign 
to  it. 

Such  an  agreement  as  I  have  here  sketched  out 
would  at  once  lift  international  politics  out  of  the 
bloody  and  hopeless  squalor  of  the  present  conflict. 
It  is,  I  venture  to  assert,  the  peace  of  the  reasonable 
man  in  any  country  whatever.  But  it  needs  the 
attention  of  such  a  disengaged  people  as  the  Ameri- 
can people  to  work  it  out  and  supply  it  with  — 
weight.  It  needs  putting  before  the  world  with 
some  sort  of  authority  greater  than  its  mere  entire 
reasonableness.  Otherwise  it  will  not  come  before 
the  minds  of  ordinary  men  with  the  effect  of  a 
practicable  proposition.  I  do  not  see  any  such 
plant  springing  from  the  European  battlefields.  It 
is  America's  supreme  opportunity.  And  yet  it  is 
the  common  sense  of  the  situation,  and  the  solu- 
tion that  must  satisfy  a  rational  German  as  com- 
pletely as  a  rational  Frenchman  or  Englishman. 
It  has  nothing  against  it  but  the  prejudice  against 
new  and  entirely  novel  things. 

§  3 

In  throwing  out  the  suggestion  that  America 
should  ultimately  undertake  the  responsibility  of 
proposing  a  world  peace  settlement,  I  admit  that 
I  run  counter  to  a  great  deal  of  European  feeling. 


268       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

Nowhere  in  Europe  now  do  people  seem  to  be 
in  love  with  the  United  States.  But  feeling  is  a 
colour  that  passes.  And  the  question  is  above  mat- 
ters of  feeling.  Whether  the  belligerents  dislike 
Americans  or  the  Americans  dislike  the  belligerents 
is  an  incidental  matter.  The  main  question  is  of 
the  duty  of  a  great  and  fortunate  nation  towards  the 
rest  of  the  world  and  the  future  of  mankind. 

I  do  not  know  how  far  Americans  are  aware  of 
the  trend  of  feeling  in  Europe  at  the  present  time. 
Both  France  and  Great  Britain  have  a  sense  of 
righteousness  in  this  war  such  as  no  nation,  no 
people,  has  ever  felt  in  war  before.  We  know  we 
are  fighting  to  save  all  the  world  from  the  rule  of 
force  and  the  unquestioned  supremacy  of  the  mili- 
tary idea.  Few  Frenchmen  or  Englishmen  can 
imagine  the  war  presenting  itself  to  an  American 
intelligence  under  any  other  guise.  At  the  inva- 
sion of  Belgium  we  were  astonished  that  America 
did  nothing.  At  the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania  all 
Europe  looked  to  America.  The  British  mind  con- 
templates the  spectacle  of  American  destroyers  act- 
ing as  bottleholders  to  German  submarines  with  a 
dazzled  astonishment.  "  Manila,"  we  gasp.  In 
England  we  find  excuses  for  America  in  our  own 
past.  In  '66  we  betrayed  Denmark;  in  '70  we  de- 
serted France.  The  French  have  not  these  memo- 
ries.    They  do  not  understand  the  damning  tempta- 


THE  ENDING  OF  THE  WAR  269 

tions  of  those  wlio  feel  they  are  ^'^  au-dessus  de  la 
melee."  They  believe  they  had  some  share  in  the 
independence  of  America,  that  there  is  a  sacred 
cause  in  republicanism,  that  there  are  grounds  for 
a  peculiar  sympathy  between  France  and  the  United 
States  in  republican  institutions.  They  do  not 
realise  that  Germany  and  America  have  a  common 
experience  in  recent  industrial  develofjment,  and 
a  common  belief  in  the  "  degeneracy  "  of  all  nations 
with  a  lower  rate  of  trade  expansion.  They  do  not 
realise  how  a  political  campaign  with  the  slogan 
of  "  Peace  and  a  Full  Dinner-Pail "  looks  in  the 
Middle  West,  what  an  honest,  simple,  rational  ap- 
peal it  makes  there.  Atmospheres  alter  values.  In 
Europe,  strung  up  to  tragic  and  majestic  issues, 
to  Europe  gripping  a  gigantic  evil  in  a  death  strug- 
gle, that  would  seem  an  inscription  worthy  of  a 
pigstye.  A  child  in  Europe  would  know  now  that 
the  context  is,  "  until  the  bacon-buyer  calls,"  and 
it  is  diflQcult  to  realise  that  adult  citizens  in  Amer- 
ica may  be  incapable  of  realising  that  obvious  con- 
text. 

I  set  these  things  down  plainly.  There  is  a  very 
strong  disposition  in  all  the  European  countries  to 
believe  America  fundamentally  indifferent  to  the 
rights  and  wrongs  of  the  European  struggle;  sen- 
timentally interested  perhaps,  but  fundamentally 
indifferent.     President  'Wilson   is   regarded  as   a 


270       ITALY,  PKANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

mere  academic  sentimentalist  by  a  great  number  of 
Europeans.  There  is  a  very  widespread  disposition 
to  treat  America  lightly  and  contemptuously,  to 
believe  that  America,  as  one  man  put  it  to  me  re- 
cently, "  hasn't  the  heart  to  do  anything  great  or  the 
guts  to  do  anything  Vvicked."  There  is  a  strong 
undercurrent  of  hostility  therefore  to  the  idea  of 
America  having  any  voice  whatever  in  the  final 
settlement  after  the  war.  It  is  not  for  a  British 
writer  to  analyse  the  appearances  that  have  thus 
affected  American  world  prestige.  I  am  telling 
what  I  have  observed. 

Let  me  relate  two  trivial  anecdotes. 

X.  came  to  my  hotel  in  Paris  one  day  to  take  me 
to  see  a  certain  munitions  organisation.  He  took 
from  his  pocket  a  picture  postcard  that  had  been 
sent  him  by  a  well-meaning  American  acquaintance 
from  America.  It  bore  a  portrait  of  General 
Lafayette,  and  under  it  was  printed  the  words, 
"  General  Lafayette,  Colonel  in  the  United  States 
army.'' 

"  Oh !  these  Americans ! "  said  X.  with  a  gesture. 

And  as  I  returned  to  Paris  from  the  French  front, 
our  train  stopped  at  some  intermediate  station 
alongside  of  another  train  of  wounded  men.  Ex- 
actly opposite  our  compartment  was  a  car.  It  ar- 
rested our  conversation.  It  was,  as  it  were,  an 
ambulance  de  grand  luxe;  it  was  a  thing  of  very 


THE  ENDING  OF  THE  WAR  271 

light,  bright  wood  and  very  golden  decorations;  at 
one  end  of  it  was  painted  very  large  and  fair  the 
Stars  and  Stripes,  and  at  the  other  fair-sized  letters 
of  gold  proclaimed  —  I  am  sure  the  lady  will  not 
resent  this  added  gleam  of  publicity  — "  Presented 
by  Mrs.  William  Vanderbilt." 

My  companions  were  French  writers  and  French 
military  men,  and  they  were  discussing  with  very 
keen  interest  that  persistent  question,  "the  ideal 
battery."  But  that  ambulance  sent  a  shaft  of  light 
into  our  carriage,  and  we  stared  together. 

Then  Colonel  Z.  pointed  with  two  fingers  and 
remarked  to  us,  without  any  excess  of  admiration : 

^^  America! '' 

Then  he  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  pulled  down 
the  corners  of  his  mouth. 

We  felt  there  was  nothing  more  to  add  to  that, 
and  after  a  litle  pause  the  previous  question  was 
resumed. 

I  state  these  things  in  order  to  make  it  clear  that 
America  will  start  at  a  disadvantage  when  she 
starts  upon  the  mission  of  salvage  and  reconcilia- 
tion which  is,  I  believe,  her  proper  role  in  this 
world  conflict.  One  would  have  to  be  blind  and 
deaf  on  this  side  to  be  ignorant  of  European  per- 
suasion of  America's  triviality.  I  would  not  like  to 
be  an  American  travelling  in  Europe  now,  and  those 
I  meet  here  and  there  have  some  of  the  air  of  men 


272       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

who  at  any  moment  may  be  dunned  for  a  debt. 
They  explode  without  provocation  into  excuses  and 
expostulations. 

And  I  will  further  confess  that  when  Viscount 
Grey  answered  the  intimations  of  President  Wilson 
and  ex-President  Taft  of  an  American  initiative  to 
found  a  World  League  for  Peace,  by  asking  if  Amer- 
ica was  prepared  to  back  that  idea  with  force,  he 
spoke  the  doubts  of  all  thoughtful  European  men. 
No  one  but  an  American  deeply  versed  in  the 
idiosyncrasies  of  the  American  population  can  an- 
swer that  question,  or  tell  us  how  far  the  delusion  of 
world  isolation  which  has  prevailed  in  America  for 
several  generations  has  been  dispelled.  But  if  the 
answer  to  Lord  Grey  is  "  Yes,"  then  I  think  history 
will  emerge  with  a  complete  justification  of  the  ob- 
stinate maintenance  of  neutrality  by  America.  It 
is  the  end  that  reveals  a  motive.  It  is  our  ultimate 
act  that  sometimes  teaches  us  our  original  inten- 
tion. No  one  can  judge  the  United  States  yet. 
Were  you  neutral  because  you  are  too  mean  and 
cowardly,  or  too  stupidly  selfish,  or  because  you  had 
in  view  an  end  too  great  to  be  sacrificed  to  a  mo- 
ment of  indignant  pride  and  a  force  in  reserve  too 
precious  to  dispel?  That  is  the  still  open  question 
for  America. 

Every  country  is  a  mixture  of  many  strands. 
There  is  a  Base  America,  there  is  a  Dull  America, 


THE  ENDING  OF  THE  WAR  273 

there  is  an  Ideal  and  Heroic  America.  And  I  am 
convinced  that  at  present  Euroiie  underrates  and 
misjudges  the  possibilities  of  the  latter. 

All  about  the  world  to-day  goes  a  certain  free- 
masonry of  thought.  It  is  an  impalpable  and 
hardly  conscious  union  of  intention.  It  thinks  not 
in  terms  of  national  but  human  experience ;  it  falls 
into  directions  and  channels  of  thinking  that  lead 
inevitably  to  the  idea  of  a  world-state  under  the 
rule  of  one  righteousness.  In  no  part  of  the  world 
is  this  modern  type  of  mind  so  abundantly  de- 
veloped, less  impeded  by  antiquated  and  perverse 
political  and  religious  forms,  and  nearer  the  sources 
of  political  and  administrative  power,  than  in 
America.  It  does  not  seem  to  matter  what  thou- 
sand other  things  America  may  happen  to  be,  see- 
ing that  it  is  also  that.  And  so,  just  as  I  cling  to 
the  belief,  in  spite  of  hundreds  of  adverse  phenom- 
ena, that  the  religious  and  social  stir  of  these  times 
must  ultimately  go  far  to  unify  mankind  under  the 
kingship  of  God,  so  do  I  cling  also  to  the  persuasion 
that  there  are  intellectual  forces  among  the  rational 
elements  in  the  belligerent  centres,  among  the  other 
neutrals  and  in  America,  that  will  co-operate  in 
enabling  the  United  States  to  play  that  role  of  the 
Unimpassioned  Third  Party,  which  becomes  more 
and  more  necessary  to  a  generally  satisfactory  end- 
ing of  the  war. 


274       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 


The  idea  that  the  settlement  of  this  war  must  be 
what  one  might  call  an  unimpassioned  settlement 
or,  if  you  will,  a  scientific  settlement  or  a  judicial 
and  not  a  treaty  settlement,  a  settlement,  that  is, 
based  upon  some  conception  of  what  is  right  and 
necessary  rather  than  upon  the  relative  success  or 
failure  of  either  set  of  belligerents  to  make  its  Will 
the  standard  of  decision,  is  one  that,  in  a  great 
variety  of  forms  and  partial  developments,  I  find 
gaining  ground  in  the  most  different  circles.  The 
war  was  an  adventure,  it  was  the  German  adven- 
ture under  the  Hohenzollern  tradition,  to  dominate 
the  world.  It  was  to  be  the  last  of  the  Conquests. 
It  has  failed.  Without  calling  upon  the  reserve 
strength  of  America  the  civilised  world  has  de- 
feated it,  and  the  war  continues  now  partly  upon 
the  issue  whether  that  adventure  shall  ever  be  re- 
peated or  whether  it  shall  be  made  forever  impos- 
sible, and  partly  because  Germany  has  no  organ 
but  its  Hohenzollern  organisation  through  which  it 
can  admit  its  failure  and  develop  its  latent  readi- 
ness for  a  new  understanding  on  lines  of  mutual 
toleration.  For  that  purpose  nothing  more  re- 
luctant could  be  devised  than  Hohenzollern  im- 
perialism. But  the  attention  of  every  combatant 
—  it  is  not  only  Germany  now  —  has  been  concen- 


THE  ENDING  OF  THE  WAR  275 

trated  upon  military  necessities;  every  nation  is  a 
clenched  nation,  with  its  powers  of  action  centred 
in  its  own  administration,  bound  by  many  strategic 
threats  and  declarations,  and  dominated  by  the  idea 
of  getting  and  securing  advantages.  It  is  inevi- 
table that  a  settlement  made  in  a  conference  of  bel- 
ligerents alone  will  be  short-sighted,  harsh,  limited 
by  merely  incidental  necessities,  and  obsessed  by 
the  idea  of  hostilities  and  rivalries  continuing 
perennially ;  it  will  be  a  trading  of  advantages  for 
subsequent  attacks.  It  will  be  a  settlement  alto- 
gether different  in  effect  as  well  as  in  spirit  from 
a  world  settlement  made  primarily  to  establish  a 
new  phase  in  the  history  of  mankind. 

Let  me  take  three  instances  of  the  impossibility 
of  complete  victory  on  either  side  giving  a  solution 
satisfactory  to  the  conscience  and  intelligence  of 
reasonable  men. 

The  first  —  on  which  I  will  not  expatiate,  for 
every  one  knows  of  its  peculiar  difficulty  —  is  Po- 
land. 

The  second  is  a  little  one,  but  one  that  has  taken 
hold  of  my  imagination.  In  the  settlement  of 
boundaries  preceding  this  war  the  boundary  be- 
tween Serbia  and  north-eastern  Albania  was  drawn 
with  an  extraordinary  disregard  of  the  elementary 
needs  of  the  Albanians  of  that  region.  It  ran  along 
the  foot  of  the  mountains  which  form  their  summer 


276       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

pastures  and  their  refuge  from  attack,  and  it  cut 
their  mountains  off  from  their  winter  pastures  and 
market  towns.  Their  whole  economic  life  was  cut 
to  pieces  and  existence  rendered  intolerable  for 
them.  Now  an  intelligent  third  party  settling  Eu- 
rope would  certainly  restore  these  market  towns, 
Ipek,  Jakova,  and  Prisrend,  to  Albania.  But  the 
Albanians  have  no  standing  in  this  war;  theirs  is 
the  happy  lot  that  might  have  fallen  to  Belgium 
had  she  not  resisted;  the  war  goes  to  and  fro 
through  Albania;  and  when  the  settlement  comes, 
more  particularly  if  it  is  a  settlement  with  the 
allies  of  Serbia  in  the  ascendant,  it  is  highly  im- 
probable that  the  slightest  notice  will  be  taken  of 
Albania's  plight  in  this  region.  In  which  case  these 
particular  Albanians  will  either  be  driven  into  exile 
to  America  or  they  will  be  goaded  to  revolt,  which 
will  be  followed  no  doubt  by  the  punitive  procedure 
usual  in  the  Balkan  peninsula. 

For  my  third  instance  I  would  step  from  a  mat- 
ter as  small  as  three  market  towns  and  the  grazing 
of  a  few  thousand  head  of  sheep  to  a  matter  as  big 
as  the  world.  What  is  going  to  happen  to  the 
shipping  of  the  world  after  this  war?  The  Ger- 
mans, with  that  combination  of  cunning  and  stu- 
pidity which  baffles  the  rest  of  mankind,  have  set 
themselves  to  destroy  the  mercantile  marine  not 


THE  ENDING  OP  THE  WAR  277 

merely  of  Britain  and  France  but  of  Norway  and 
Sweden,  Holland,  and  all  the  neutral  countries. 
The  German  papers  openly  boast  that  they  are 
building  a  big  mercantile  marine  that  will  start  out 
to  take  up  the  world's  overseas  trade  directly  peace 
is  declared.  Every  such  boast  receives  careful  at- 
tention in  the  British  press.  We  have  heard  a  very 
great  deal  about  the  German  will-to-power  in  this 
war,  but  there  is  something  very  much  older  and 
tougher  and  less  blatant  and  conspicuous,  the  Brit- 
ish will.  In  the  British  j^apers  there  has  appeared 
and  gained  a  permanent  footing  this  phrase,  "  ton 
for  ton."  This  means  that  Britain  will  go  on  fight- 
ing until  she  has  exacted  and  taken  over  from  Ger- 
many the  exact  equivalent  of  all  the  British  ship- 
ping Germany  has  submarined.  People  do  not  real- 
ise that  a  time  may  come  when  Germany  will  be 
glad  and  eager  to  give  Eussia,  France  and  Italy  all 
that  they  require  of  her,  when  Great  Britain  may  be 
quite  content  to  let  her  allies  make  an  advantage- 
ous peace  and  herself  still  go  on  fighting  Germany. 
She  does  not  intend  to  let  that  furtively  created 
German  mercantile  marine  ship  or  coal  or  exist 
upon  the  high  seas  —  so  long  as  it  can  be  used  as 
an  economic  weapon  against  her.  Neither  Britain 
nor  France  nor  Italy  can  tolerate  anything  of  the 
sort. 


278       ITALY,  FKANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

It  has  been  the  peculiar  boast  of  Great  Britain 
that  her  shipping  has  been  unpatriotic.  She  has 
been  the  impartial  carrier  of  the  whole  world.  Her 
shippers  may  have  served  their  own  profit;  they 
have  never  served  hers.  The  fluctuations  of  freight 
charges  may  have  been  a  universal  nuisance,  but 
they  have  certainly  not  been  an  aggressive  national 
conspiracy.  It  is  Britain's  case  against  any  Ger- 
man ascendancy  at  sea,  an  entirely  convincing  case, 
that  such  an  ascendancy  w^ould  be  used  ruthlessly 
for  the  advancement  of  German  world  power.  The 
long-standing  freedom  of  the  seas  vanishes  at  the 
German  touch.  So  beyond  the  present  w^ar  there 
opens  the  agreeable  prospect  of  a  mercantile  strug- 
gle, a  bitter  freight  war  and  a  war  of  Navigation 
Acts  for  the  ultimate  control  in  the  interests  of 
Germany  or  of  the  Anti-German  allies,  of  the 
world's  trade. 

Now  how  in  any  of  these  three  cases  can  the  bar- 
gaining and  trickery  of  diplomatists  and  the  ad- 
vantage-hunting of  the  belligerents  produce  any 
stable  and  generally  beneficial  solution?  What  all 
the  neutrals  want,  what  every  rational  and  far- 
sighted  man  in  the  belligerent  countries  wants, 
what  the  common  sense  of  the  whole  world  de- 
mands, is  neither  the  "ascendancy"  of  Germany 
nor  the  "ascendancy"  of  Great  Britain  nor  the 
"ascendancy"  of  any  state  or  people  or  interest 


THE  ENDING  OF  THE  WAR  279 

in  the  shipping  of  the  world.     The  plain  right  thing 
is  a  world  shipping  control,  as  impartial  as  the 
Postal  Union.     What  right  and  reason  and  the  wel- 
fare of  coming  generations  demand  in  Poland  is  a 
unified    and    autonomous    Poland,    with    Cracow, 
Danzig,  and  Posen  brought  into  the  same  Polish- 
speaking   ring-fence   with   Warsaw.     What   every 
one  who  has  looked  into  the  Albanian  question  de- 
sires is  that  the  Albanians  shall  pasture  their  flocks 
and  market  their  sheepskins  in  peace,  free  of  Serb- 
ian control.     In  every  country  at  present  at  war, 
the  desire  of  the  majority  of  people  is  for  a  non-con- 
tentious solution  that   will   neither  crystallise   a 
triumph  nor  propitiate  an  enemy,  but  which  will 
embody  the  economic  and  ethnological  and  geo- 
graphical common  sense  of  the  matter.     But  while 
the   formulae   of   national   belligerence    are   easy, 
familiar,  blatant,  and  insistently  present,  the  gen- 
tler,  greater  formulae  of  that  wider  and  newer 
world  pacificism  has  still  to  be  generally  under- 
stood.    It  is  so  much  easier  to  hate  and  suspect 
than  negotiate  generously  and  patiently;  it  is  so 
much  harder  to  think  than  to  let  go  in  a  shrill 
storm  of  hostility.     The  national  pacifist  is  ham- 
pered not  only  by  belligerency  but  by  a  sort  of 
malignant  extreme  pacificism  as  impatient  and  silly 
as  the  extremest  patriotism. 


280       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

§  5 

I  sketch  out  these  ideas  of  a  world  pacification 
from  a  third  party  standpoint,  because  I  find  them 
crystallising  out  in  men's  minds.  I  note  how  men 
discuss  the  suggestion  that  America  may  play  a 
large  part  in  such  a  permanent  world  pacification. 
There  I  end  my  account  rendered.  These  things 
are  as  much  a  part  of  my  impression  of  the  war 
as  a  shell  burst  on  the  Carso  or  the  yellow  trenches 
at  Martinpuich.  But  I  do  not  know  how  opinion 
is  going  in  America,  and  I  am  quite  unable  to  esti- 
mate the  power  of  these  new  ideas  I  set  down,  rela- 
tive to  the  blind  forces  of  instinct  and  tradition  that 
move  the  mass  of  mankind.  On  the  whole  I  be- 
lieve more  in  the  reason-guided  will-power  of  men 
than  I  did  in  the  early  half  of  1914.  If  I  am  doubt- 
ful whether  after  all  this  war  will  "end  war,"  I 
think  on  the  other  hand  it  has  had  such  an  effect  of 
demonstration,  that  it  may  start  a  process  of 
thought  and  conviction,  it  may  sow  the  world  with 
organisations  and  educational  movements,  consid- 
erable enough  to  grapple  with  and  either  arrest  or 
prevent  the  next  great  war  catastrophe.  I  am  by 
no  means  sure  even  now  that  this  is  not  the  last 
great  war  in  the  experience  of  men.  I  still  believe 
it  may  be. 

The  most  dangerous  thing  in  the  business  so  far 
as  the  future  is  concerned  is  the  wide  disregard 


THE  ENDING  OF  THE  WAR  281 

of  the  fact  that  national  economic  fighting  is  bound 
to  cause  war,  and  the  almost  universal  ignorance 
of  the  necessity  of  subjecting  shipping  and  over- 
seas and  international  trade  to  some  kind  of  in- 
ternational control.  These  two  things,  restraint 
of  trade  and  advantage  of  shipping,  are  the  chief 
material  causes  of  anger  between  modern  states. 
But  they  would  not  be  in  themselves  dangerous 
things  if  it  were  not  for  the  exaggerated  delusions 
of  kind  and  difference  and  the  crack-brained  "  loy- 
alties "  arising  out  of  these  that  seem  still  to  rule 
men's  minds.  Years  ago  I  came  to  the  conviction 
that  much  of  the  evil  in  human  life  was  due  to  the 
inherent  vicious  disposition  of  the  human  mind  to 
intensify  classification.*  I  do  not  know  how  it  will 
strike  the  reader,  but  to  me  this  war,  this  slaughter 
of  eight  or  nine  million  people,  is  due  almost  en- 
tirely to  this  little,  almost  universal  lack  of  a  clear- 
headedness; I  believe  that  the  share  of  wickedness 
in  making  war  is  quite  secondary  to  the  share  of 
this  universal  shallow  silliness  of  outlook.  These 
effigies  of  emperors  and  kings  and  statesmen  that 
lead  men  into  war,  these  legends  of  nationality  and 
glory,  would  collapse  before  our  universal  derision, 
if  they  were  not  stuffed  tight  and  full  with  the  un- 
thinking folly  of  the  common  man. 

*  See  my  "  First  and  Last  Things,"  Bk.  I,  and  my  "  A  Modem 
Utopia,"  Ch.  X. 


282       ITALY,  FKANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

There  is  in  us  all,  an  indolent  capacity  for  suf- 
fering evil  and  dangerous  things  that  I  contemplate 
each  year  of  my  life  with  a  deepening  incredulity. 
I  perceive  we  suffer  them;  I  record  the  futile  pro- 
tests of  the  intelligence.  It  seems  to  me  incredible 
that  men  should  not  rise  up  out  of  this  muddy, 
bloody,  wasteful  mess  of  a  world  war,  with  a  resolu- 
tion to  end  forever  the  shams,  the  prejudices,  the 
pretences  and  habits  that  have  impoverished  their 
lives,  slaughtered  our  sons,  and  wasted  the  world,  a 
resolution  so  powerful  and  sustained  that  nothing 
could  withstand  it. 

But  it  is  not  apparent  that  any  such  will  arises. 
Does  it  appear  at  all?  I  find  it  hard  to  answer 
that  question  because  my  own  answer  varies  with 
my  mood.  There  are  moods  when  it  seems  to  me 
that  nothing  of  the  sort  is  happening.  This  war 
has  written  its  warning  in  letters  of  blood  and  flame 
and  anguish  in  the  skies  of  mankind  for  two  years 
and  a  half.  When  I  look  for  the  collective  response 
to  that  warning,  I  see  a  multitude  of  little  chaps 
crawling  about  their  private  ends  like  mites  in  an 
old  cheese.  The  kings  are  still  in  their  places,  not 
a  royal  prince  has  been  killed  in  this  otherwise  uni- 
versal slaughter;  when  the  fatuous  portraits  of  the 
monarchs  flash  upon  the  screen  the  widows  and 
orphans  still  break  into  loyal  song.    The  ten  thou- 


THE  ENDING  OF  THE  WAR  283 

sand  religions  of  mankind  are  still  ten  thousand 
religions,  all  busy  at  keeping  men  apart  and  hostile. 
I  see  scarcely  a  measurable  step  made  anywhere 
towards  that  world  kingdom  of  God,  which  is,  I 
assert,  the  manifest  solution,  the  only  formula  that 
can  bring  peace  to  all  mankind.  Mankind  as  a 
whole  seems  to  have  learnt  nothing  and  forgotten 
nothing  in  thirty  months  of  war. 

And  then  on  the  other  hand  I  am  aware  of  much 
quiet  talking.  This  book  tells  of  how  I  set  out  to 
see  the  war,  and  it  is  largely  conversation.  .  .  . 
Perhaps  men  have  alw^ays  expected  miracles  to 
happen;  if  one  had  always  lived  in  the  night  and 
only  heard  tell  of  the  day,  I  suppose  one  would 
have  expected  dawn  to  come  as  a  vivid  flash  of  light. 
I  suppose  one  would  still  think  it  was  night  long 
after  the  things  about  one  had  crept  out  of  the 
darkness  into  visibility.  In  comparison  with  all 
previous  wars  there  has  been  much  more  thinking 
and  much  more  discussion.  If  most  of  the  talk 
seems  to  be  futile,  if  it  seems  as  if  every  one  were 
talking  and  nobody  doing,  it  does  not  follow  that 
things  are  not  quietly  slipping  and  sliding  out  of 
their  old  adjustments  amidst  the  babble  and  be- 
cause of  the  babble.  Multitudes  of  men  must  be 
struggling  with  new  ideas.  It  is  reasonable  to 
argue  that  there  must  be  reconsideration,  there 


284       ITALY,  FRANCE  AND  BRITAIN 

must  be  time,  before  these  millions  of  mental  ef- 
forts can  develop  into  a  new  collective  purpose  and 
really  show  —  in  consequences. 

But  that  they  will  do  so  is  my  hope  always  and 
on  the  whole,  except  in  moods  of  depression  and  im- 
patience, my  belief.  When  one  has  travelled  to  a 
conviction  so  great  as  mine  it  is  difficult  to  doubt 
that  other  men  faced  by  the  same  universal  facts 
will  not  come  to  the  same  conclusion.  I  believe 
that  only  through  a  complete  simplification  of  re- 
ligion to  its  fundamental  idea,  to  a  world-wide  real- 
isation of  God  as  the  king  of  the  heart  and  of  all 
mankind,  setting  aside  monarchy  and  national  ego- 
tism altogether,  can  mankind  come  to  any  certain 
happiness  and  security.  The  precedent  of  Islam 
helps  my  faith  in  the  creative  inspiration  of  such 
a  renascence  of  religion.  The  Sikh,  the  Moslem, 
the  Puritan  have  shown  that  men  can  fight  better 
for  a  Divine  Idea  than  for  any  flag  or  monarch  in 
the  world.  It  seems  to  me  that  illusions  fade  and 
effigies  lose  credit  everywhere.  It  is  a  very  wonder- 
ful thing  to  me  that  China  is  now  a  republic.  .  .  . 
I  take  myself  to  be  very  nearly  an  average  man, 
abnormal  only  by  reason  of  a  certain  mental  rapid- 
ity. I  conceive  myself  to  be  thinking  as  the  world 
thinks,  and  if  I  find  no  great  facts,  I  find  a  hundred 
little  indications  to  reassure  me  that  God  comes. 
Even  those  who  have  neither  the  imagination  nor 


THE  ENDING  OF  THE  WAR  285 

the  faith  to  apprehend  God  as  a  reality  will,  I 
think,  realise  presently  that  the  Kingdom  of  God 
over  a  world-wide  system  of  republican  states,  is 
the  only  possible  formula  under  which  we  may  hope 
to  unify  and  save  mankind. 


THE  BND 


PBIKTED  IN   THB    UKITED    STATBS   Of   AHBBIOA 


T 


HE  following  pages  contain  advertisements  of 
Macmillan  books  by  the  same  author. 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

God  The  Invisible  King 

Ready,  May,  1917 

Readers  of  "  Mr.  Britling  Sees  It  Through  "  were  par- 
ticularly impressed  with  the  religious  note  which  it 
sounded  especially  in  its  closing  pages.  The  funda- 
mental ideas  of  God  and  of  the  spiritual  life  of  man 
therein  set  forth  were  responsible  to  no  inconsiderable 
degree  for  the  tremendous  appeal  of  that  story.  These 
facts  make  this  volume  in  which  Mr.  Wells  sets  out  as 
forcibly  and  exactly  as  possible  his  religious  belief,  of 
great  value.  Mr.  Wells  describes  the  book  himself  as 
one  written  by  a  man  "  sympathetic  with  all  sincere  re- 
ligious feelings  "  and  yet  a  man  who  feels  that  he  must 
protest  against  those  dogmas  which  have  obscured,  per- 
verted and  prevented  the  religious  life  of  mankind.  The 
spirit  of  this  book,  he  says,  is  like  that  of  a  missionary, 
who  would  only  too  gladly  overthrow  and  smash  some 
Polynesian  divinity  of  shark's  teeth  and  painted  wood 
and  mother-of-pearl.  The  purpose  of  the  volume  like 
the  purpose  of  that  missionary  is  not  primarily  to  shock 
and  insult  but  to  liberate  —  the  author  is  impatient  with 
the  reverence  that  stands  between  man  and  God. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers     64-66  Fifth  Avenue     New  York 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

Mr.  Britling  Sees  It  Through 


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"  A  powerful,  strong  story.  Has  wonderful  pages 
.  .  .  gems  of  emotional  literature.  .  .  .  Nothing  could 
express  the  whole,  momentous  situation  in  England  and 
in  the  United  States  in  so  few  words  and  such  convincing 
tone.  .  .  .  For  clear  thinking  and  strong  feeling,  the 
finest  picture  of  the  crises  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  world  that 
has  yet  been  produced."  —  Philadelphia  Public  Ledger. 

"  Not  only  Mr.  Wells'  best  book,  but  the  best  book  so 
far  published  concerning  the  war."  —  Chicago  Tribune. 

"  The  most  thoughtfully  and  carefully  worked-out  book 
Mr.  Wells  has  given  us  for  many  a  year.  ...  A  ver- 
itable cross-section  of  contemporary  English  life  .  .  . 
admirable,  full  of  color  and  utterly  convincing."  —  New 
York  Times. 

"  A  war  epic.  .  .  .  To  read  it  is  to  grasp,  as  perhaps 
never  before,  the  state  of  affairs  among  those  to  whom 
war  is  the  actual  order  of  the  day.  Impressive,  true, 
tender,  .  .  .  infinitely    moving    and    potent."  —  Chicago 

Tribune. 

"  For  the  first  time  we  have  a  novel  which  touches  the 
life  of  the  last  two  years  without  impertinence.  This  is 
a  really  remarkable  event,  and  Mr.  Wells'  book  is  a  proud 
achievement.  .  .  .  The  free  sincerity  of  this  book,  with 
its  unfailing  distinction  of  tone,  is  beautiful  ...  a  crea- 
tion with  which  we  have  as  yet  seen,  in  this  country  at 
least,  nothing  whatever  to  compare."  —  London  Times. 


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BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

What  is  Coming  ? 


Cloth,  jsmo,  $1.50 

This  book  is  a  forecast  of  the  consequences  of  the  war.  The 
profound  psychological  changes,  the  industrial  and  diplomatic 
developments,  the  reorganizations  in  society  which  are  sure  to  fol- 
low so  great  an  upheaval  of  the  established  institutions,  are  sub- 
jects to  which  Mr.  Wells  devotes  his  deep  insight  into  men's  minds 
as  well  as  his  prophetic  ability.  Out  of  the  materials  of  the  past 
and  the  history-making  present,  he  constructs  a  brilliant  and 
persuasive  picture  of  the  future,  as  sure  of  touch  as  his  daring, 
imaginative  essays,  as  full  of  interest  as  his  novels. 

Of  special  interest  are  his  chapters  on  the  United  States,  which 
set  forth  the  belief  that  here  in  the  New  World  there  is  being 
moulded  a  larger  understanding  of  the  kinship  of  nations;  an 
awakening  from  the  great  mistake  that  ideals  are  geographically 
determined ;  that  in  America  there  is  the  foundation  of  a  capacity 
for  just  estimate,  which  will  ultimately  find  its  way  into  the 
handling  and  directing  of  international  affairs.  Out  of  the  chaos 
will  come  a  dominant  peace  alliance,  in  which  the  United  States 
will  take  a  leading  part. 

"Wells  speaks  with  remarkable  sureness  and  conviction,  nor 
are  his  prophetic  conclusions,  founded  on  facts,  reasonable  re- 
search and  deep  knowledge  of  human  nature,  to  be  doubted.  The 
voice  of  the  prophet  is  well  tempered  and  moderate,  and  the 
nations  discussed  will  do  well  to  heed." —  Chicago  Herald. 

"  Of  widest  interest  and  consequence  are  Mr.  Wells's  study  and 
discussion  of  those  present  international  tendencies,  nascent  needs 
and  movements  toward  friendship  out  of  which  will  have  to  grow, 
whose  probable  growth,  indeed,  he  forecasts,  some  sort  of  leaguing 
together  of  the  nations  looking  toward  a  greater  measure  of  peace 
than  the  world  has  heretofore  en']oyed."— New  York  Times. 


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The  Research  Magnificent 


Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50 

A  book  of  real  distinction  is  this  novel  from  the  pen  of  an 
author  whose  popularity  in  America  is  no  less  than  in  his  native 
England,  where  he  is  put  in  the  front  ranks  of  present-day  writers. 
The  Research  Magnificent  is  pronounced  by  those  critics  who  have 
read  it  to  be  the  best  work  that  Mr.  Wells  has  done,  realizing 
fully  the  promises  of  greatness  which  not  a  few  have  found  in  its 
immediate  predecessors.  The  author's  theme  —  the  research  mag- 
nificent—  is  the  story  of  one  man's  search  for  the  kingly  life. 
A  subject  such  as  this  is  one  peculiarly  suited  to  Mr.  Wells's 
literary  genius,  and  he  has  handled  it  with  the  skill,  the  feeling,  the 
vision,  which  it  requires. 

"  Displays  the  best  in  Wells  as  a  thinker,  as  a  critic  of  man,  as 
a  student  of  social  and  political  crises,  and  —  most  of  all  —  as  a 
novelist." —  Boston  Transcript. 

"An  Extraordinary  ...  a  Wonderful  Book." — New  Republic. 

"A  novel  of  distinct  interest,  with  a  powerful  appeal  to  the 
intellect." — New  York  Herald. 

"  Challenges  discussion  at  a  hundred  points.  It  abounds  in 
stimulating  ideas." — New  York  Times. 

"  A  noble,  even  a  consecrated  work  .  .  .  the  crown  of  his 
caTttr."—New  York  Globe. 

"A  notable  novel,  perhaps  its  author's  greatest  .  .  .  might  al- 
most be  called  an  epitome  of  human  existence." — Chicago  Herald. 


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BEALBY 

By  H.  G.  WELLS 
Author  of  "The  Wife  of  Sir  Isaac  Harman,"  etc 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.35 

This  is  the  story  of  the  revolt  of  a  little  boy  who  does  not 
want  to  be  a  steward's  helper  or  a  member  of  the  serving  class 
but  whose  heart  is  set  on  accompHshing  "something  big."  It 
is  told  with  a  delightful  sense  of  the  whimsical.  The  situa- 
tions abound  in  humor — that  peculiarly  fascinating  humor  for 
which  Mr.  Wells  is  so  famous.  Bealby,  alias  Dick  Maltravers, 
who  runs  away  from  his  troubles  only  to  encounter  fresh  ones, 
is  as  wholly  charming  a  character  as  Mr.  Wells  has  ever  cre- 
ated and  one  whose  ever  changing  fortunes  the  reader  follows 
with  unbroken  interest. 

"  'Bealby'  because  of  its  sprightly  style  and  multitude  of  inci- 
dents is  never  wearisome." — Boston  Transcript. 

"Such  an  excursion  into  the  realm  of  fun  as  Wells  has  not 
made  since  The  History  of  Mr.  Polly'  .  .  .  There  are  more 
sparkles  to  the  square  inch  than  in  any  other  Wells  book." — 
Cincinnati  Enquirer. 

"Mr.  Wells  has  written  a  book  as  unpolitical  as  'Alice  in 
Wonderland'  and  as  innocent  of  economics  as  of_  astrology. 
A  deliciously  amusing  comedy  of  action  swift,  violent,  and 
fantastic." — New  York  Times. 

"It  is  Wells  on  a  vacation,  a  vacation  from  the  war;  a  vaca- 
tion that  will  be  enjoyed  by  every  one  who  takes  it  with  him." 
— New  York  Globe. 


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The  Wife  of  Sir  Isaac  Harman 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50 

"  Easily  the  best  piece  of  fiction  of  the  book  season." 

—  Graphic. 

"  The  book  has  all  the  attractive  Wells  whimsies, 
piquancies,  and  fertilities  of  thought,  and  the  story  is 
absolutely  good  to  read."  —  New  York  World. 

"  This  time  Mr.  Wells  is  very  little  of  a  socialist,  con- 
siderably of  a  philosopher,  prevailingly  humorous,  and 
always  clever."  —  The  Bellman. 

"  A  new  novel  by  H.  G.  Wells  is  always  a  treat,  and 
*  The  Wife  of  Sir  Isaac  Harman '  will  prove  no  disap- 
pointment. .  .  .  The  book  in  many  ways  is  one  of  the 
most  successful  this  versatile  sociologist  has  turned  out.'"' 

—  La  Follette's  Magazine. 

"  A  novel  of  unusual  excellence  told  with  fine  literary 
skill.  Mr.  Wells  has  a  way  of  going  under  the  surface 
of  things  while  presenting  his  incidents  and  characters." 

—  Boston  Globe. 

"  The  book  is  the  most  complete  and  successful  of  the 
group  to  which  it  belongs." — New  York  Times. 


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The  War  in  the  Air 

Illustrated,  ismo,  $1.50 

"  It  is  not  every  man  who  can  write  a  story  of  the  improbable 
and  make  it  appear  probable,  and  yet  that  is  what  Mr.  Wells  has 
done  in  '  The  War  in  the  Air.' " — The  Outlook. 

"A  more  entertaining  and  original  story  of  the  future  has 
probably  never  been  written." — Town  and  Country. 

".  .  .  Displays  that  remarkable  ingenuity  for  which  Mr.  Wells 
is  now  famous."  — Washington  Star. 

"  Forcible  in  the  extreme." —  Baltimore  Sun. 

"  It  k  an  exciting  tale,  a  novel  military  "history."— AT.  Y.  Post 

New  Worlds  for  Old 

Cloth,  lamo,  $i.so 
'Macmillan  Standard  Library  Edition,  50  cents. 


•  •  • 


is  a  readable,  straightaway  account  of  Socialism;  it  is 
singularly  informing  and  all  in  an  undidactic  way." — Chicago 
Evening  Post. 

"  The  book  impresses  us  less  as  a  defence  of  Socialism  than  as 
a  work  of  art.  In  a  literary  sense,  Mr.  Wells  has  never  done 
anything  better." — Argonaut. 

"...  a  very  good  introduction  to  Socialism.  It  will  attract  and 
interest  those  who  are  not  of  that  faith,  and  correct  those  who 
are." —  The  Dial. 


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THE  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

Santa  Barbara 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW. 


Series  9482 


THE   SONG  OF  THE  TANKS. 

We  are  the  strangest  gpa^n  there  be 
of  that  man-made  Devil,  War: 

We  seem  some  horrible  drunken  dream 
—yet  actually  We  ARE 

We  are  the  gruesome,  gibb  Bring  beasts, 
playing  our  ludicrous  pranks. 

Straddling  over  some  death-filled  ditch, 
terrible,  merciful  Tanks 

In  the  flare  of  Hell  men  see  us  and 
laugh— as  we  drunkenb-  lurch  and 
roll: 

Wo  climb,  we  dip,  we  reel,  we  trip,  yet 
ever  on,  to  our  Goal ! 

Our  entrails  burn  with  the  fire  of  youth, 

gun  muzzles  at  our  port. 
And    the    steady    hand    of    the    gunner 

moves    as    though    this    thing    were 

Bport! 

We  wallow  and  creep  tl- rough  mud, 
man-deep,  through  wire- meshed  bar- 
ricades. 

We  spew  forth  Death  to  tho  crazy  Hun, 
and  haunt  him,  gruesone  Shades! 

Wherever  we  go  we  scattei-  the  foe:  no 
beast  and  no  mere  machine 

May  track  our  path  as  we  squirm  along, 
belching  our  deadly  spleen. 

I  Within    us    cluster    our    soldier    boys. 

laughing  their  rollicking  laugh, 
I  Steady  and  ready  and  strong  and  young, 

from  Tommy  to  Chlef-of-Staff. 

For  wo  arc  the  natural  spawn  of  War— 
as  made  by  the  Kulturcd  Hun.    .    .    , 

The  kindest,  crudest.  uglic:!t  beast  that 
prospers  uhder  the  sun. 

Terrible   Tanks    of    Death    wo   are,    ter- 
rible—lovable, too .' 
'  For,  though  we  slaughter,  't  is  to  save: 
they  love  us,  our  working  crew, 

The    day    shall    come   when,    our   work 
woU    done,    you'll    keep    us    just    for 
show- 
Just   to    remember    the    Things    we    Did 

to  the  Heathen,  Long  /go'. 

• 

We'll  hold  our  court  In  som-i  prim  room, 
with  the  great  grim  Dirosaur, 

And  men  shall  ga."!p  at  our  ugliness— 
then  laugh  as  they  laughed  before! 

You  see,  though  blundering  Tanks  we 
be,  gigantic  Beetles  or  Toads, 

We  arc  the  Autos  who  do  not  need  your 
we!l-m.ade,  well-kept  roj-ds  I 

Nor  shall  we  spraddle  and  lurch  In  vain 
—we'll  do  our  bit  till  we've  wonl 

Tilt  the  Earth  is  clean  and  the  World  Is 
fret  and  women  *afe  frcm  the  Hun! 

ELIZABETH  NEWPORT  HEPEf^'RN. 


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